Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

Onward!

The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. (Alex Carey, Australian writer and social psychologist)

It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century. (same guy)

I won’t belabor this point, as I know it is bad form. But I am the only person I know who predicted that the Final Nine would uphold the individual mandate. (Side note: I also predicted that Obama would extend the Bush tax cuts. He’ll be reelected and will again extend those tax cuts next year.) I also said in some blog somewhere that the only parts of the law in danger were those of actual benefit to us, such as Medicaid expansion.

More predictions, if my reader thinks I have any credibility at all:

1. Medical costs will continue to go up at alarming rates. Those who see this and support ACA will say “Yeah, but they’d be going up faster if we didn’t have this law.” The non-falsifiable hypothesis is very useful in the art of sophistry.
Continue reading “Onward!” →

Ferguson: Party differences are real

Thomas Ferguson has developed an interesting take on American politics. In this short clip (audio is poor, so turn your sound up) he briefly explains the difference between the two parties. Contrary to my contention, he says there really is more than a dime’s worth of difference between them: Each party is backed by different investors.

I have seen evidence to undermine this theory – the switching back and forth that Wall Street investment houses do. They ride the tide, going with whichever party is likely to win, or both in uncertainty.

Nonetheless, his theory is well-developed and goes back many decades in time. It is explained more fully in this clip.

An ACA Primer

Q: Democrats are pretty excited about the Supreme Court ruling upholding ACA. Why so?

A: It’s mostly because Obama is president, and he’s a Democrat. It’s victory for their party. They get to chicken dance a little.

Q: That’s it? Party politics?

A: That’s not all of it, of course. But that is most of it. After all, the bill that they got is not at all like what they talked about when Obama was running in 2008.

Q: Isn’t that the hard reality of politics – that you never get all of what you want?

A: They didn’t fight for anything we wanted. This bill is not a result of compromise. I wish that it was.

Q: But there are some good things in it, right? You didn’t lose everything.

A: They have their bullet points. I’ve read them recently.

Q: Such as?

A: Children can stay on parents’ insurance until age 26 now.

Q: Not a good thing?

A: Not a matter of great concern for insurers. One, kids that age are low-risk clients. And two, anyway, they just build the risk into the rate structure. It’s not like they gave something away.

Q: Other bullet points?
Continue reading “An ACA Primer” →

Sad day indeed

And the winners are …
I expressed doubt in the post below that the Final Nine would undo ACA, not due to my genius or psychic abilities, but for the sake of simple clear outlook: The Supreme Court, just like the president, congress and state governments, is under control of private wealth. ACA is the bill that AHIP and PhRMA wanted. The Democrats and some Republicans staged a Kabuki Theater to pass the bill, providing the illusion that something was being debated, and that had not already been decided. SCOTUS was not about to overturn it.

The bill is a huge loss of personal freedom. It is a cost sinkhole. It will not improve health care delivery, reduce costs, or improve the quality of care. It will pad the bottom lines of insurance companies, delivering by force 33 million new customers. For those who cannot afford to pay tribute, the government will do so on their behalf. It is a massive subsidy to our least deserving sector.
Continue reading “Sad day indeed” →

Waiting on the mullahs

The Supreme Court will rule today on the Affordable Care Act
This falls under the heading “water is wet,” but the very idea that nine mullahs get to rule on every law passed by (somewhat) democratically elected representatives is the very definition of tyranny. Iran has a similar system. Their mullahs are religious clerics. Ours are Wall Street barons and wealthy families.

Oh, I know – we’re in laugh-about-it-shout-about-it election time, and people are going to select from limited pre approved choices. That is the extent of representative rule, but man it does suck up the oxygen! I think that is the only real purpose of national elections – to give us the illusion of self-rule.
Continue reading “Waiting on the mullahs” →

Kool Aid shortage in Colorado Springs

Colorado is enduring the worst fires in state history. Colorado Springs proper is threatened, and 32,000 people have been evacuated. 

If there were any humor in this situation, and I emphasize that there is not, it is this: A local nickname given Colorado Springs is “Aynrandistan.” More than any other large city in the state, the Springs drank the free market Kool Aid. Even as they depend on government spending more than most communities, they imagine that government is a problem. 

They need a few things now – help from their fellow citizens, help from government to house and protect them and put out the fire. There isn’t much help on the way from their vaunted private sector. 

What is government? It is us. When is government a problem? When it is captured by concentrated wealth. Indeed, government is often a problem these days in BushObamastan, as the executive branch and regulatory agencies, the Senate and most state governments have been captured by private wealth. 

The budget for fighting fires was cut in Colorado last year. Too much government. Colorado Springs is in deep, deep trouble. Maybe they can use Kool Aid to put out the fire.

Coffee time with David Crisp’s Billings Outpost

We’re sitting in a coffee shop in Billings MT, my home town. My only remaining connection here is my mother, 95 and hopelessly memory-deficient. We visit her, and she pretends to know me. She does not, although staff says that in a lucid moment recently she referred to “my boys,” as in “they don’t visit much, do they.”

I have been reading David Crisp’s Outpost as we sit here, a delight. Crisp is a baseball fan, small town variety, or real ball. He covers the local team, the Rookie League Billings Mustangs, a farm team of the Cininnati Reds, which is why I am branded on that team.
Continue reading “Coffee time with David Crisp’s Billings Outpost” →

Barbaric practice deemed illegal

A German court has ruled that religious circumcision is a crime. It’s about time! The practice, irreversible, ought to be delayed until the boy has all the facts and the judgement needed to make his own choice.

I’d go a step further and insist that religious organizations be prohibited from entering a child’s mind until the child is of age to make informed choices. I still haven’t forgiven the Catholics for invading my six year-old head and filling it full of images of demons and burning flesh. This was given to me as the alternative to believing what they told me I must believe.

That is barbaric. But then we all know that if respect for youth was the accepted practice, religion as we know it would disappear, to be replaced by even crazier shit. Like Scientology.

Skulkers

They could have just said that they want their little newspaper to be about food and music.

This post caught my eye as at another place we discussed the meaning of “hubris.” Lynne Foland, publisher of the Missoula Independent, referred to those who read columnist George Ochenski and who are upset at his firing as “disaffected.”

The word means alienated and resentful of authority.

It reminds me of a fellow who used to manage Yellowstone Public Radio in Billings, Montana. He had read a book describing “conspiracy theorists” as mentally unstable, and took great comfort. He too exhibited this arrogance.

In each case here, Our YPR guy and Foland (and Robert Meyerowitz, I take it), they are attempting to cast themselves in a superior light by demeaning those who disagree as being out of the mainstream, as if that in itself is grounds for contempt. They take perverse pleasure in siding with authority.

It does not require chops. There is no attempt to be right and no desire to engage opponents. They take their cues from group consensus and authority figures. Thought is not required, and spirit even less so. They mirror the status quo, an easy thing to do.

But it is no way to go through life. As I view things, they exhibit cowardice.