Another reason to keep fighting the good fight

As you may have guessed or maybe read before I write impulsively. Something hits me or I read something and I espouse my opinions. Or if it is sports related it is usually a reaction to something.

If it is around public policy I usually try to come up with a solution to the problem. The problem is I go pretty deep into the weeds and sometimes really far into one corner and pick on some deep weeds. Today I am going to try and stay out of the weeds. Wish me luck.

So I was reading an article that said over 80 million people in this country have Medicaid or CHIPS. So I looked it up, as of 2019 there are approximately 328 million people in this county. Doing the simple math that means about 25% of our country is needing government assistance for health care. This is not total number of people needing government assistance, this is just for health care. And just recently the ACA or Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court and that is separate from Medicaid and CHIPS since you have to pay a premium to have ACA coverage. Think about that for a moment. A quarter of our country cannot afford healthcare coverage on their own.

And this post isn’t about the above statistic. It is about what drives this statistic. This problem does need to be addressed, yet hopefully we could do it as part of addressing the broader problem that causes the above scenario.

I love it when Republicans say we do not want socialism in this country, yet it is their previous policies that drive the need for socialistic sounding public policy like Medicaid.

You cannot continue to favor the wealthy over all other aspects of how this country is governed. If you do, you get socialism, either by continued need and the Democrats pushing this legislation or eventually a public upheaval where whole swaths of the country start revolting. 

And partly this is about the wealth gap, or mainly about the wealth gap. It may just depend on how you address the disparity of how people in this country are treated. 

Think about infrastructure. I have mentioned before the current proposal was watered down. Then under the myth of bi-partisanship it ended up no where near where it needed to be. With the watered down proposal, it is now seriously lacking.

And it is not socialism to say our government needs to take care of the infrastructure of this country. Maybe using all tax dollars to pay for everything isn’t the most productive way to get there, but we need to find ways to address our needs completely and effectively.

So hopefully not to go too deep into the weeds, we do need to address how infrastructure is paid for, or how we can change the dynamic of the government helping 25% of our country with healthcare or many other burdens placed on society because our policy is titled towards the ultra wealthy. Even the Democrats cannot unburden us from this dilemma. 

And it is not socialism to address these issues. Socialism is created when you do not go towards a more equitable social and public policy that creates more balance in society.

I have spent the morning doing chores around the house going deep into the weeds in my head with ideas to help us out. I will spare you the details. If you ever want to ask, you can email me, somewhere in all the data is my email address. I have spoken to some ideas before, but in general there are many good ideas to address the specifics of public policy for healthcare or infrastructure or other public policy that go beyond what some people call socialism. 

So do not let so called conservative politicians tell you that public policy that addresses the needs of the many is socialism. The free market or capitalism does better when the vast majority benefit from it, not just a few. 

Again I have dug into the weeds on many previous posts and can at any given moment, but for today I wanted to address the statistic of the healthcare to highlight again why we must continue to fight the good fight. And as you know I do not feel either the Democrats or the Republicans have a clue what are the solutions. 

The article was in Yahoo Finance online if you want to read more. The article does perturb me a bit for some specific reasons, but I will leave that alone since I want to highlight the the importance of the statistic it bases its arguments from.

Hope your summer is going well. 

HEY!, we are civilized drunks here

 So the Mavs saga will continue, most of us will never know the whole story, we just have to accept change has happened and hope for the best and hopefully the Mavs take steps forward next year. Until then, we will cry in our beers and complain about the Cowboys.

I like wine, especially with food. And this includes those stupid cheese trays or boards or whatever. Actually I started drinking in my twenties and have not learned a damn thing, except certain dark berry flavors are my preferred red wines. Yes, I know all the wines come with hints of this and hints of that, it is the dark berry hints I prefer. 

I also like Pinot Nior along with Cabernet Sauvignons. It breaks up the monotony to try new wines regularly and as I have gotten older I am very open to all that there is to try. In fact, I prefer new varieties. I do not like Moscato though. For some reason it is popular, but instead give me a Riesling if you want a decent sweet wine. Anyway we spent a day and a half in Napa Valley recently and I could go back. The problem being we didn’t spit anything out. We went to the smaller vineyards and just had glass after glass after glass and you do lose the joy of tasting something new because, well, you have had glass after glass after glass. I enjoyed the overall experience and as time goes on, maybe I will be a bit more civilized and follow through on the actual true wine tasting.

Nothing like procrastination. I am suppose to be writing something for another endeavor and well, here I am. Tomorrow will be another day and hope to spend it with friends with good wine and good times, maybe a bit of this fancy rum we just bought. It is always dangerous to go to the tasters at the liquor store, more so than the wine tasters, but when you get to taste $100+ bottles of liquor for free, you have to go for it. And no we didn’t spend $100+, we bought the more reasonable version, but still a pretty penny. 

And to all you that have children, Happy Father’s Day

Cheers

I blame Governor Abbott

Governor Abbott has signed so much BS into law that the world was thrown off its axis and then titled the world of the Dallas Mavericks and now us fans are left scratching our head trying to figure out what next. Change happens, but too much change is too much change. And there was an article that talked about Mark Cuban hiring someone then staying the hell out of the way. I agree 100%. The last thing Dallas needs is another Jerry Jones. One screwed up team is enough.

People forget the beauty of masks. You don’t have to worry about what you ate for lunch, nor do you have to cut your nose hairs as often. 

Back to Governor Abbott, white people don’t want to talk about racism, yet we should be headed towards it; guns are for everyone no matter the consequences; we are a democracy so we need to keep people from voting, which hasn’t passed yet, but do not hold your breath; a fixed energy system that isn’t fixed; a brand new shiny wall with no oversight and needing donations to build; get the drift, the faux conservatism of the 2020′s. Yes, this was too much for the normal balance in the world.

Bye Rick, you will be remembered well and good luck wherever you land.

Cheers

various comments on various topics

I work in an office building where the elevator I ride puts up various news headlines or sports headlines or whatever so you can read a couple of items while riding up to your floor. This week they have put up some statistics for the baseball season. And earlier this week there was a Texas Ranger pitcher in the top five for ERA in the American League. Then yesterday they showed the top five home run hitters in the AL and one was a Texas Ranger. Okay what gives with the rest of the team since we are like astronomically behind everyone else in the standings? 

Why do some so called conservatives think letting people have all the guns they want is a good thing? I do believe everyone has a right to own a gun, but when you advertise you can be an idiot and carry guns around willy nilly, the idiots are going to come out carrying guns willy nilly. How does Governor Abbott sleep at night? Who owns the responsibility when innocent children get shot up left and right just to please every “conservative” who thinks he/she knows how to handle a gun. When the deal goes down on some city streets in Texas, and it will, what will Governor Abbott say then? 

You know infrastructure also includes plans for the homeless. Or it should.

And speaking of, still no progress on helping the mentally ill in this country. 

2-3 months from now, a hurricane will flood somewhere in the Southeast or a few hurricanes will cause a few floods. Around about the same time wild fires will be torching significant parts of California. Why is it so hard for people to put 2 and 2 together? Build a few reservoirs to pump water into, then send it down pipes to the west. Said it more than once, but no one listens. Why is common sense a problem? (see previous posts)

If I hear one more Luka Doncic rumor I am going to explode. (I can never find the accents)

We were coming back from vacation and the better half says she was glad to be coming home. I felt like we were just getting started. 

And now our Governor is building a wall. I am watching the news and there are no details as to how much of a wall he wants to build, nor when, but by golly we are going to have the Guinness Book of World Record largest graffiti board. As I have said before this wall will require exorbitant amount of dollars and manpower to maintain it so what purpose does it provide when the same dollars could be used for the manpower to patrol the border anyway. Get some drones, and concentrate the manpower when you see people crossing illegally. 

And if you think Putin is so great, move to Russia. Supporting Putin is supporting the enemy. He says he wants us to fail so why are you on his side?

My version of the postmortem for the Dallas Mavericks past season

 I blame JJ Redick, I do not fault him, I just blame the psyche of the game 6 loss on him not being there.

Basically we went and traded for him for the sole purpose of having someone who could keep their cool in the fourth quarter of a series clinching game. Someone who could have made a couple of three pointers and slowed the momentum the Clippers built up going into the fourth quarter of game 6 and allowed the rest of the team to regroup offensively. The Mavs don’t have much playoff experience and he would have been the guy to give Luka that person to cause the defense to switch and adjust so Luka could redirect and get back involved. 

Yeah Kristaps Porzingis should have been that guy, the second star, but he doesn’t have the playoff experience to help out in a crucial moment. And I don’t think he came through for most of the series anyway so why would he be able to at that crucial moment.

Hardaway too inconsistent, he doesn’t have a bad game or two, he is just plain inconsistent.

I have faith in Dorian Finney Smith and Maxi Kleber, but they are the two guys who needed that veteran presence to help alleviate their tightness playing at that moment. Jalen Brunson probably needed it also.

Dwight Powell’s energy was always good, yet again though he needed someone to settle and right the ship so he could focus and let Luka use his energy. 

Gotta love Boban and that is enough said, just keep him. And he played really well.

The team needed help and the person they went and got for that moment wasn’t there. Not his fault he was injured, but hey I wouldn’t be here moping eating a pizza that is going to give me heartburn from hades later on instead of watching game 2 of a Dallas Utah series and loving life. 

Next year is going to be rough. Can the Mavs get a second star in a trade and who might that be? And they still need to keep some pieces that we have. Who we trade can have a major effect negatively or positively. 

The Mavs had a chance, unfortunately we didn’t have the guy to help all our young players gather the confidence to finish the game. Losing two first round series back to back does affect players and for the Mavs to have a future they need to keep Luka and make him want to stay here. This means this offseason will be more important than any Mavs’ fan wants it to be. 

Sheesh

Biden’s infrastructure plan is weak, needs more and

 He needs to quit compromising.

There are now at least three or more types of Republicans: The McConnell do not let anyone do anything least it spoil our power faction, the Trump crazy as hell faction, the old guard that Wall Street is everything faction and possibly some actual Republicans who are truly conservative and care about our country. 

Either way we need to rethink what infrastructure is and build on it. And what is more, what is weak etc??? 

First there are serious infrastructure problems and we cannot afford the amount of work we need. Second we still need to find the money because what we need we sure as heck need. 

Biden’s plan to incorporate including a new energy grid that incorporates renewable energy is infrastructure. He shouldn’t compromise.

Roads and bridges and similar are desperately needed and probably more so than what first meets the eye.

As per my previous post, education has desperate needs. 

And there is so much more. And as a conservative you have to look at best ways to fund the infrastructure projects, some is general taxation, some can be direct taxation like the gasoline tax for roads, and some can be with public private partnerships from businesses that will benefit from the project. 

First a note on the gasoline tax since we want to change to renewable energy. There will have to be a shift away from this revenue stream for planning purposes. If we want to get off fossil fuels we cannot expect this revenue without finding another source to replace it. This really should be part of the discussion going forward. I do not like toll roads for many reasons, yet one being it is like double taxation since we are paying for the gasoline tax since we use gasoline to drive on these roads. This will need to be something we get ahead of to maintain roads going forward.

For now though I am rehashing an idea I think is important for the future of our country, gives an example of public private partnership, and economic development and this approach should be examined for many of the infrastructure projects going forward.

My project is the management of water. I previously talked about building canals criss crossing the country maybe running side by side with the interstates, someone recently told me use pipelines instead. 

Doing this creates many jobs including middle class and upper middle class jobs in management, engineering, project management, construction, architecture and the list goes on.

The goal is to manage areas that are prone to flooding and moving that water to the west to continue agriculture and help with adding water back into the system where there are droughts. You could pipe the water to points upstream in a river such as the Colorado River let it flow its natural course and then eventually that water helps to fill into Lake Mead so the water supply is replenished and Hoover Dam continues to generate electricity.

Industries that benefit include insurance, agriculture and of course the electric companies. Agriculture and electric companies are obvious, insurance benefits in many ways. First if you plan ahead well, you can start pumping water from rivers before the heavy rains begin so as to prevent widespread flooding and the damages it causes. This water is then pumped westward. While you could never get it perfect reducing the amount of water temporarily and the management of this helps to protect property and hopefully lives so the cost of claims is significantly lower. The water headed to drought areas reduces the wildfire risk also protecting property and lives and again reducing the claim costs. Yes, the government would have to be involved in a project this large, but by including private industry money  and possibly planning, it helps to lower the tax burden on the general population. And yes there are many details to work out, yet the benefits could be tremendous such as expanding agriculture in the west even expanding more into the desert. And I have another idea around farmer subsidies if agriculture is expanded, but that is another post. 

And this is a quick example, there may be other industries that benefit that could be involved to lower tax payer costs even more.

I know skeptics will say industries will transfer costs to the consumer and if not managed well, they will. Part of the planning will include cost analysis to help alleviate this scenario. You help the industries invest, create revenue bond packages in general paid for by the income of people consuming water, and implement temporary price controls. There will be say that conservatives believe in the free market and prices shouldn’t  be regulated. In our interconnected world that no longer applies across the board and we have to realize certain situations and events will require some intervention to adapt to changes we can’t predict. It doesn’t have to be permanent, but the laissez faire concept of business has to be readdressed. Too much of our world relies on too many pieces to let the market define everything. It would be nice, but some markets such as water and electricity etc will need cohesive management for the greater good. 

This is not abandoning business, but accepting the reality we face in the modern world. Wall Street balking at everything that doesn’t allow them to churn money to make money is not capitalism, just greed. These are the projects where Wall Street’s role is to be more of the traditional investment banker such as packaging the revenue bonds, not driving a you must meet our expectations to be considered successful. Businesses should be allowed to plan long term so the company thrives long term versus being forced to answer to short term profits all the time. 

Anyway the above aside, we need to plan ahead as a country so when you talk about infrastructure it is about fixing roads and buildings, but to really make infrastructure work, you also need to think long term and plan to meet the challenges ahead. Building a new road or school won’t do anyone any good if it is washed out in a flood or there is no power to turn on the lights. 

And one final point, if you think climate change is happening then these types of projects are a must.

Cheers

And you wonder why things are going so wrong?????

There is an article on NBC News website by Heidi Przybyla titled “Schools across U.S. plagued with Third World issues, experts and local officials say.”

This article is about the failing structure in schools and school facilities in regards to the infrastructure debate. It goes on to discuss this problem has been known for decades and goes into the details about inner city schools some and how much money is dedicated to repairing schools in the infrastructure bills and how much is truly needed. And how problems exist throughout the country for school buildings and facilities.

So basically our public education system is declining across the board in quality of education and quality control. On one website called “World’sbesteducationsystems” the U.S. did not make the top twenty for the 1st quarter of 2021; on another website called “thebalance” there is an article from February 2021 subtitled “How it hurts the economy and you”  that says the U.S. is falling below the average in math and science scores (and you know I feel that education is more than math and science, but for the modern workforce math and science are important); ironically a website called worldpopulationreview references a ranking from US News and World Report that puts the U.S. second in the world, yet goes on to state the U.S. is 24th in science test scores and 38th in math. The ranking of second is based primarily on about 70 percent of students go on to higher education which if the students don’t do well before higher education then eventually the quality of higher education is going to reflect this decline. So should we be measuring just on number of students in higher education alone? Emphatically no. 

Students are struggling to read and write. If you cannot understand the material in front of you, then how does anyone expect these students to do well on standardized tests no matter the subject? 

So here we are, no one wants to put the money into schools, no one wants to put the time into the quality of education, no one wants to be held accountable so what do we expect? In Texas we spend tens of millions of dollars for just one high school football stadium, yet we cannot hold these same student athletes to a higher standard in their studies. Too often winning on Friday night is more important than winning on any given Monday through Friday morning.

Don’t get me wrong, I love that our students are given the opportunity for extra curricular activities whether football or band or drama or anything else (to me this is part of an education), but where do we put our priorities? It should be in the classroom first and for decades it hasn’t been. 

This is a societal problem and looking at everything going on in our society it shows. People are easily conned, no one has the ability to think critically and common sense is extinct it seems. A good education system brings these qualities out in people. Yes, knowing the subject matter well is important, but if you cannot apply what you learn where are you headed? Apparently nowhere.

So with the ongoing infrastructure debate in Washington headed nowhere what should we do. First of all, we need to pull our heads out of the sandbox and realize education is key to any society achieving greatness so we need to make this a priority. Second we need to stand up and tell our political leadership this is a priority. This is a failure at the local, state and national levels. And it doesn’t matter which party is in power this decline has been happening for decades so both are to blame. 

A democracy survives and thrives when the people participate, yet for way too long we have left the decisions up to people who come into and stay in power by pandering to special interests and the small majority of each political party with outsize participation. The majority of the country sits by waiting on someone else to take the lead or having the misconception that these same politicians actually care about them. I wonder if the declining level of education has something to do with this thought, hint hint hint. 

Yes, it is way past obvious our education system, both in quality and structures, is suffering. And we need to act, but if the two parties in power now cannot even agree that spending money on the damn building is important, how are we ever going to get the resources and money for what is needed inside the building?

Education and equal opportunity are not just words, they are the foundation to great countries and societies. You do not need to wonder what is going wrong, you need to wonder how we are going to change the path in front of us. 

Bubba you gotta keep praying

 Okay if you read this blog, you know I am a big time Mavs fan. So this series is just about killing me. The better half is ready to throw the TV out the window and is pretty much yelling at me to stop yelling at the TV. 

And yet we still love each other.

We managed to spend a week on the road and made it back home and both of us are still in one piece. We had a wonderful trip and she took quite an inordinate amount of pictures. I hope to obtain a few to put on this blog. Her Facebook page already has a few up.

So Bubba keep praying for those Mavs and even throw in a few for this country. Too many crazy people telling me they are the ones who are crazy.

Cheers for the Mavs!