Category Archives: health

Things seemed so normal then

Posted on by
1

Remember how normal things seemed the last time we gathered on a chilly Monday on the south front of the Capitol lawn for the inauguration of a new governor?

Eric Greitens, a young Republican populist, riding the wave of the Donald Trump-led populist surge nationally, was sworn in as governor in what he referred to in his opening remarks as “our republic’s most revered ritual: the peaceful transfer of power.”

Greitens, who saw the governorship as one step in his eventual trip to the White House, promised to “be loyal to your needs and priorities—not to those who posture or pay for influence.”

Former sheriff and former senator Mike Parson, days removed from open-heart surgery, surprised some of us by being on the platform, taking the oath as Lieutenant Governor.

Jay Ashcroft, son of a former state auditor, attorney general, governor, and U. S. Senator John Ashcroft (only Mel Carnahan matched him by holding four statewide offices in his career), was sworn in as Secretary of State.

Former Senator Eric Schmitt became the new State Treasurer that day.

And University of Missouri law professor Josh Hawley took over as Attorney General after a campaign in which he vowed he would not use the office as a stepping stone to something higher.

Nobody wore masks that day, four years and two days ago.

Eleven days later, another inauguration saw Donald Trump rise to the Presidency, a surprise to many in the Republican establishment and a frightening possibility in the eyes of many who were not his deepest believers.

How normal things seemed even then—despite the uneasiness many felt about the tenor of the campaigns that put Greitens and Trump in office on those days.

A few months after that bright but chilly January day, Greitens was gone, resigning before he could be impeached after refusing to reveal records of his campaign and ongoing finances, and being dragged through the headlines generated by a sex scandal.

His resignation triggered unprecedented chair-swapping in state government.  Mike Parson moved up to governor and appointed term-limited Senate leader Mike Kehoe as the new Lieutenant Governor, an appointment later ruled legal by the Missouri Supreme Court.

Josh Hawley, forgetting his promise not to use his office as a stepping stone, rode the continuing Trump wave to victory over Claire McCaskill two years later, leading Governor Parson to appoint State Treasurer  Schmitt to replace Hawley in the Attorney General’s Office. The House budget chairman, Scott Fitzpatrick, was appointed to become the new Treasurer.

Only Jay Ashcroft remains where voters put him four years and two days ago.

Today is far different from that day four years ago.

Our capitol has emerged from months in a giant plastic cocoon in which workers cleaned and replaced stone put in place more than a century ago, ended serious water leakage problems, and even restored Ceres, the patron goddess of agriculture, to the top of the dome so she once again welcomes those attending today’s ceremonies.

Mike Parson is being sworn in for a term of his own as governor, bearing the scars of dealing with a pandemic, a state economic collapse it caused, and the pain of the budget cuts he had to make–all in an election year.

Eric Greitens’ wife left him; he reportedly is hoping he can rehabilitate himself to seek public office again, although his thoughts of a presidency might be much dimmer than they were when inauguration day was HIS day full of hope.

Josh Hawley, with his own dreams of White House glory, is under intense criticism from former supporters in the public and present colleagues in Washington for his attempt to capitalize on Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories that have led to one of the most alarming political incidents in our lifetimes.

Donald Trump is isolated and increasingly alone, living the bitter final days in power he fears giving up, the idea of a peaceful transfer of power completely foreign to him.

And today we wear masks, our nation still under siege from a terrible virus that has forced us to withdraw from friends and family.

Oddly enough, a sentence from the inaugural address of Eric Greitens on January 9, 2017 comes to mind.

“This state in the heart of America has proven that the worst in our history can be overcome by the best in our people.”

Let us hope and fervently pray that on that, at least, he will be correct.

 

Us vs. It—part XII What’s next?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been a while (August) since we had a Us vs It entry but with vaccines starting to go into people’s arms, we have reached a new stage in this siege.

Even as we remain absorbed by the fight against the Coronavirus, we must start thinking of what comes after.

We will be different when we emerge from this plague. We will see in a glaring spotlight the shortcomings in our American system of doing things.  The list of issues, which must be addressed in ways that bridge a chasm of partisanship, will be long and should be inescapable.

Tough and thorough evaluations need to be made at the federal and state levels of the conditions of our readiness in the current situation and our preparations for readiness for the next wave. The evaluations are too important for Congress or for state legislatures. We need the brutal honesty of something like the Kerner Commission of the late 1960s.

Given social unrest that has flared during this time of the plague, it is good to recall the Kerner Commission not only to prove the point of this post but to highlight what it said more than fifty years ago that is tragically too close to life today.

Many, if not most, of those who read these entries might be too young to remember the commission appointed by President Johnson and headed by former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. It was formed after disastrous racial violence in 25 cities that far exceeded anything we saw in Ferguson a few years ago or that we have seen in some cities more recently.  The commission’s final report was brutal. It warned that this country was so divided that it was on the verge of becoming two “radically unequal societies—one black, one white.”

We won’t discuss here how accurate that forecast might still be—because we are talking about a different issue that deserves the same tough examination and, if necessary, the same brutal honesty in its assessment.  There are many who think the Kerner Commission’s report, and its severe final assessment, fell on deaf ears. The assessment of what our state and nation need to do in the face of massive threats to our health and to our economy deserves the same severe approach but certainly not the same outcome.

We might need new laws and new regulations to make us better prepared in the public and the private sector for the next pandemic.  It would be unwise to dismiss such things as once-in-a-century events.  Our world has changed and is changing and it’s clear that nothing seems to be constant anymore. And we do not know if our changing world produces a climate more susceptible to new and deadly viruses.

Even now, we recognize the failure to find ways to keep rural hospitals open and the inadequacy of internet communications in many areas (that provide telehealth services, in particular) can no longer be ignored and tolerated.  We are learning that science cannot be dismissed and that those whose roles involve anticipating the next sweeping illness or the next world outbreak must regain their numbers and their status.  We are learning that our healthcare system always must be prepared, staffed, and equipped for the worst—and must not be in a position of determining who lives or dies based on personal financial standing.

We need to be ready at the state level. But pandemics have a tendency to overcome even the best state preparations and financial capabilities. A national crisis requires national leadership, national empathy, and national cooperation with states. It is unfortunately true that states can’t print money but the federal government can and money is a gigantic factor in fighting pandemics all the way down to the smallest communities.

Our experiences might teach us new things about distance learning and suggest some significant changes in our country’s elementary and secondary (and collegiate) education systems.

The economic paralysis should teach us to look more closely at a trend in jobs that we have noticed but to which we haven’t given enough attention—-the growing tendency to use independent contractors instead of having fulltime employees.  The independent contractors often get no fringe benefits and that can have some long-term impacts on retirements but especially (as in times like this) on healthcare.  The number of people who live on commissions and tips who have neither opportunities to create retirement plans nor the money to buy health insurance will grow as our economy changes and their lives should not be imperiled when our country is next ravaged by a new pandemic.

Likewise, the pandemic-caused work-from-home operations will have taught us things about large offices and the need for them.  The entire business model of large buildings for a single business, or single floors in a large building for one company might change because of what we have learned about working away from a central headquarters. The sweatshop still exists in our country but it is rare because of labor laws, fire safety codes, unions, and minimum wage laws that have curtailed those conditions.  Will the Coronavirus doom cubicle farms tomorrow?  Will is lead to a rise in union activity?

What will all of this mean in terms of society—-social gatherings, organizational memberships, business-employee relationships, civic clubs, churches?

We will be remiss if we do not anticipate tomorrow’s society based on what we are learning from today’s pandemic.

Our world is changing in so many categories—climate, economics, education, health, communications—that we cannot continue to have society as usual.

If it takes new laws and new regulations to do something as simple as making sure our healthcare institutions and services maintain adequate supplies of protective apparel, equipment and facilities for treatment,  let’s have them.

To those who would say such positions represent government overreach, there is a basic response.  Government has a role when the private sector abuses its liberties or fails its responsibilities. There is no lack of discussion in these times that such things have happened.  There also is no lack of discussion about how government, itself, has failed to meet its responsibilities to the people who entrust it with their well-being.

All of these issues and more need to be addressed so we know what will come after the virus has gone away.  That’s why new Kerner-type Commissions are needed at the state and federal levels. We are at a point in our existence where the blunt findings are needed and cannot be put on a shelf.  And we, as people, cannot be afraid to address the issues that will be forcefully put in front of us.

Here is a key point:

These commissions should not include elected officials as members.  Partisan Foxes do not belong in Pandemic Assessment Hen Houses.

We appreciate the work our public officials are trying to do in difficult times. It is time to work on the instant issue without wasting time casting blame.  But it is time also to start thinking of what comes after, and what comes after must be an unblinking hard assessment of what is present and what is needed to deal with the next health or economic or health/economic crises that will visit us. We cannot be afraid to do what is needed.

It might make no difference to our generation if we fail to act.  But other generations will sicken and die if we don’t.

HAPPINESS AWAITS

Posted on by
Reply

(All of us can make long lists of reasons to be unhappy in the backwash of a political campaign, the uncertainty of a pandemic, the lack of job and food security, the potential for holidays apart, and more. In these conditions, it seems almost an insult to be happy. “Not so!” exclaims Dr. Frank Crane as he encourages us to find our—-)

HIDDEN HAPPINESS

Happiness is rarely visible to the multitude, says a shrewd observer; it lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places.

Happiness is a shy thing. Grief is blatant and advertising. If a boy cuts his finger he howls, proclaiming his woe. If he is eating pie he sits still and says nothing.

If you ask a man how he is, he searches himself to find a pain to report. If he has nothing but happiness he hates to mention it, and says, “Oh, not half bad.”

We conceal happiness as a vice.

We are rather suspicious of it, and if we feel particularly well, or have exceptional good luck, we knock on wood.

The fact is that happiness does not come from big events of life, but is made up of innumerable   little things.

Ordinary every-day happiness is composed of shoes that fit, stomach that digests, purse that does not flatten, a little appreciation and a big of this, that, and the other, too trifling to mention.

The big things, such as someone giving you a million dollars, are not only rare, but they do not satisfy when you have the neuritis.

We are so cantankerous by nature that we are usually able to spell happiness only by holding it before the mirror and reading backwards. Leonardo da Vinci used to write that way; that may be why he could paint “The Joyous One” with so enigmatical a smile.

For if you seek to analyze contentment you got at it negatively. To feel well means you do hnot have a headache, toothache or toe ache, you have no dyspepsia, catarrh, gout, sciatica, hives, nausea, boils, cancer, grippe, rhinitis, iritis, appendicitis nor any other itis. And to determine your joy you must reckon by checking off and eliminating the factors of possible pain. Answer—happy, if no pain discoverable. So elusive is joy!

Someday try reversing this process. Note all the pleasurable things. For instance, a good sleep, a delightful snooze in bed after you ought to get up, a delicious bath, the invigorating caress of cold water, a good breakfast, with somebody you love visible across the coffee-cups, half-hour’s diversion with the newspaper, the flash of nature’s loveliness outdoors as you go to work, interesting faces on the street car, pleasures of your business, pleasant relations with your fellow workers, meeting old friends and new faces, the good story someone tells you, and so on—you’ll fill your notebook—and you can get your disappointments and grievances into three lines.

Happiness, they say, is scant in this wicked world and hard to find.

One way to find it is to look for it.

 

Fat

Posted on by
Reply

(Dr. Frank Crane wanted to help people be better through positive thinking and in his writings he took that responsibility seriously. But Dr. Crane was not a man without humor. Our Centers for Disease Control says we are a nation of fat, that the prevalence of obesity was 42.4% in 2017-2018, the most recent year the CDC has weighed the facts and the facts show we’re plumping up. The Centers say that in 1999-2000, only 30.5% of us were, shall we say, overly insulated against the cold. As we are now into the season of over-indulging, we call upon Dr. Crane to offer some light-hearted positive thinking about this heavy topic.)

THE FAT MAN

Every once in a while, said the fat man, somebody comes along with some medicine or treatment or system of exercise or plan of starvation to reduce my flesh.

What do I want to reduce it for?  It all feels good.  And every time I lose weight I get peevish.

What’s the matter with people, anyhow, that they can make fun of fat folks?

They are the salvation of the race. They keep humanity cheerful.

Optimism is mostly a matter of adipose tissue.

Fat people like to eat and drink. They don’t have food fads. They enjoy breakfast, dinner, and supper, and a bite between. And that’s the kind of people mother likes to cook for, and the rest of the family like to live with.

People with appetites are human.

Human folks are those who make joys of life’s necessities. Must we eat? They make eating a celebration.  Must we drink? They adorn with songs the inserting of liquid into one’s anatomy. Must we labor? It shall be to music. Must we exercise? It shall be a game.

It’s your fat men that keep humanity form dying of the dry rot. They make existence a poem. They see the jokes of destiny.

Fat men have the sources of humor in them. Some lean persons have been funny, but what would they have amounted to had there been no fat persons to laugh at them?

Your skinny ones take themselves too seriously. They are reformers, prohibitionists, revolutionists, suffragettes. Their gospel is: Whatever is, is wrong.

Why do men admire slender women? They nag.

Slim women are neat, orderly, everything-in-its-place. They are good housekeepers, meaning that they keep the house fit for everybody but the husband and children.

And why do women admire slim men, with no girth? Such men are fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. They beat their wives, if they are vulgar; and persecute them more subtly, if they are cultured.

Take it from me, girls. Pick out a nice, large, round, juicy man, that likes to feed, and whose conscience is not wormy, marry him and, as the Good Books says, “let your soul delight itself in fatness. “

It doesn’t follow that because a man’s fat he’s a slob. Napoleon was roundish. Samuel Johnson was obese, and so was Boswell, who write about him.

The world and an overcoat, it was said, could not contain the glory of Victor Hugo. And believe me, he was some eater. Here’s one of his meals: veal cutlets, lima beans, oil, roast beef and tomato sauce, omelets, milk and vinegar, mustard and cheese, all swallowed rapidly with great draughts of coffee.

They called Rossini “a hippopotamus in trousers,” and for six years before his death he couldn’t see his toes.

Alexander Dumas could eat three beefsteaks to any other man’s one; and Balzac looked more like a hogshead than a human being.

Besides, added the fat man, if everybody was fat, there would be no war.  It’s the lean men that fight.

-0-

We are all one big county

Posted on by
Reply

(Normally, we try to have some positive thoughts from Dr. Frank Crane on Mondays but some recent comments on the pandemic seem far more important today)

I suspect the people in this house on this quiet street are not the only ones who are scared today. We responsibly wear our masks whenever we leave the house to go anyplace where there are other people—the YMCA, the grocery store, the bookstore downtown, church (we are back to watching services on the First Christian Church webpage now that the weather has cooled off enough we can’t meet in a park pavilion or in our parking lot and services have moved to our gymnasium).  We wash our hands.  We’ve been “nosed” twice.

But every day we look at the Health Department’s COVID dashboard and we see the numbers of new cases and deaths and the daily record hospitalizations.

Last Friday, Dr. Alex Garza, the head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force pleaded for state officials to go beyond asking citizens to be individually responsible. It is time, he said, for a statewide mask mandate and other steps because this virus is pushing our healthcare system to its breaking point—not just in the St. Louis, but everywhere.  “We’re at war. And right here, right now, the virus is winning that war. It will take significant and decisive action through individual acts and determined public policy to get us through,” he said.

The Post-Dispatch posted a video of his remarks with its web story.  We found his thoughts so important that we transcribed them because we are, frankly and honestly, scared about what is and what is likely to be, we hope you will read what else he said:

For months we have talked about a time, a time when we would run out of options, a time when we would run out of space to care for sick patients and our options would be limited when the virus is hitting us so hard that the healthcare system that we have would be unable to address the people’s needs. That terrible time gets closer with each passing minute, each passing hour, and each passing day.

 The number of people with the virus is skyrocketing in our region. The number of people so ill that they have to go to the hospital is nearly three times what we described as a sustainable level. The number of people with COVID in our intensive care units is higher than ever.

 The real peak of this pandemic has yet to come. At the pace we’re on right now we could easily—easily—double the number of COVID patients in our hospitals within about two weeks. At that point we will not have the capacity we need to sufficiently care for our patients, not just COVID patients but all patients.

 Unfortunately, as has been painfully obvious to even the casual observer, we are past the time when individual behavior alone can address this disaster. Healthcare systems across Missouri need Governor Parson and the state to take additional actions to prevent unnecessary illnesses and deaths.

 When it comes to the virus, we are all one big county now.

 Every day COVID patients are crossing county lines to go to hospitals.  The lack of a mask mandate in one county has implications for residents and healthcare professionals in other parts of the state. The spread in cases is blanketing the state and no locale is safe anymore.

 Secondly, let me be really, really clear on this. A statewide mask mandate is needed to save lives across the state. 

 Secondly, we are also asking the state to work with our system’s emergency managers to start planning for what will happen WHEN the healthcare system becomes overwhelmed. 

 Our healthcare heroes have fought valiantly day after day but we have no reserves. We have no backup that we can suddenly muster to come in and save the day. If we stay on the path we’re on, even just two more weeks, we will not have the staff we need to care for patients. It’s now just a numbers game. We are danger-close.

 Finally we are asking for a statewide safer-at-home policy. Such a policy would limit the face-to-face interaction and decrease the spread of infection. This policy would instruct residents to stay home except for specific things such as schools, going to the store, seeking medical care, among other things. This would greatly help slow the spread of the virus by eliminating social gatherings that we know continue to be the avenue for sustaining this great pandemic.

 Some counties have had only a few deaths and a relatively small number of cases. Should those counties be required to do the things Dr. Garza thinks need to be done statewide?  Their experience might argue for local control, not a statewide mandate. But even in those places, if someone becomes seriously ill, where can they go if the rural hospital that served their area is one of the dozen or so that has closed in recent years, or if that small hospital remains but its small staff operates on a thin capacity margin and can’t treat them?

A vaccine is on the horizon. But we are months away from its general availability. The virus is here. Now.  It won’t wait.  And we do not know where it is lurking, despite the individual precautions we are taking.

“We are all one big county now,” Dr. Garza said. We think he’s right.

We’re too scared to think otherwise.

Journalist vs. citizen

Posted on by
Reply

The criticism of Bob Woodward for not making public sooner our president’s remarks indicating he had early knowledge of the dangers of the coronavirus but chose not to tell the public rekindles an old and probably unresolvable question.

Is a reporter a citizen first or a journalist first?  The question probably has been raised most often when a cameraman or a reporter shoots video of a bad event happening without personally intervening to limit or prohibit harm to one or the other of the participants.

The issue has a broader context in the time of cell phone videos that lately have become triggers for more events. At what point does a citizen have a responsibility to put away a cell phone and step in to keep harm from happening to a fellow citizen? It’s not just the reporter who must make a split-second decision. The potential now exists for all of us.

Woodward is being criticized for not revealing the president’s (we think) terrible decision to conceal the dangers of the virus while assuring the public for several weeks that everything was under control and would be fine.  While the president claimed he did not want to cause a panic, anyone with any knowledge of history knows this nation does not panic. It has reflected uncertainty but it relatively quickly has steadied itself and acted. It did not panic after 9-11. It got angry. It picked up pieces. It mourned. It exhibited empathy and sympathy and dedication.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the nation did not panic. It gathered itself, dedicated itself to necessary steps to fight back.

In those two instances, we went to war.

Name your historical catastrophe and you won’t find national panic. We have a tendency to absorb our tragedies, mourn our losses, and take necessary steps to come back. We might hazard the observation that a president who doesn’t understand that lacks a significant understanding of his country.

If the president wouldn’t shoot straight with the people, should Woodward have stepped forward? And when?

Let’s turn to the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank if you will that studies issues within journalism—including ethics.  Al Tompkins is a senior faculty member and someone I highly respect.  He asked whether it was ethical for Woodward to withhold that information: https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/was-it-unethical-bob-woodward-to-withhold-trumps-coronavirus-interviews-for-months/

The institute’s senior media writer, Tom Jones, had his take: https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2020/more-fallout-from-bob-woodwards-book-on-donald-trump/

We don’t expect you to read all the way through these pieces; we present them to show that journalists face issues such as this every day, just about, and we do not treat them cavalierly.  The stories are seldom as severe as the coronavirus. But the issue of when a reporter has enough to go to press or to put it on the air is something we face a lot.

Rushing a story into print or onto the air without waiting for the context of the story to develop might do no one any good.

We are not sure Woodward should have released that first tape with our president as the president was saying telling the public that everything was under control and the fifteen present cases soon will be down to zero.  The dilemma grows as circumstances change and additional interviews are recorded with additional actions and words—or the lack of them—that make the story more important.  When does the weight of the accumulated information reach a tipping point? And as events advance, what is the best way to handle a changing tipping point?  Reporters sometimes reach a point of asking whether releasing the information will stop the story’s evolution or whether the public is better served by letting the story keep unravelling.  Does the reporter have a responsibility to a public figure to keep that person from digging a deeper hole for himself or herself? Or is it an ethical violation to tell that person to quit shoveling?   This reporter never felt he had any business telling an office-holder he should not be doing troubling acts. But there were plenty of times when it became clear that public awareness of a situation was paramount.

At a certain point, some stories move beyond the ability of the reporter to stop observing and start writing. The evaluation of when that point is reached is purely subjective. When is the time to get off the horse although the horse keeps moving?  Why not wait to see where the horse goes?

Did Bob Woodward have to sit on those tapes as long as he did?  If not, when should he have written the story?  And would writing the story have made any difference in the president’s attitude and actions?  Would publishing the story earlier have saved any lives?  Or would the president have just dismissed the story as more fake news and continued his course?

There also are times when promises are made by a reporter to get a source to divulge information. We don’t know if there was such an arrangement in this case but the reporter-source relationship is essential to the eventual flow of information and promises of anonymity or promises of holding information that is only part of a story must be honored, uncomfortable though it might be for the reporter.

We don’t know about that relationship and speculation about the potential benefits of early release of information is not our long suit. But the issue is a complicated one and it is far easier to analyze the issue after the fact than when the reporter is caught up in the events developing around him or her.

These questions however ignore the central issue and the central issue is not what Bob Woodward learned and did not report.

President Trump knew what Bob Woodward knew before Woodward knew it.  Our president knew about this virus first. He could have reacted differently and many think he should have done so. Maybe Woodward should have reported the information sooner. But the person who could have acted differently than he did because he had the information first, did not.

Which of them bore the primary responsibility for alerting the public to the danger it was going to face?

Bottom line: Actions speak louder than words. If actions had been taken by the president then, words today from Bob Woodward might not have the impact they are having.

In fact, they might not even be a story, let alone a book.

Medical ink

Posted on by
Reply

(The media took some not-unexpected bashing during the Republican National Convention last week. It bashed back by pointing out the numerous misleading and false claims that fell from the lips of various speakers. There also were misleading and false claims in the Democratic convention that were pointed out although one fact-checker said the challenged “truths” of the entire Democratic National Convention “didn’t have the number of misleading and false claims made on the first night of the Republican convention.” In a time when medical treatments for a terrible disease are almost desperately sought, and fact-checking has become more necessary in contemporary medical as well as political circles,  it might be time to turn to Dr. Frank Crane, a retired Presbyterian minister-turned-newspaper columnist whose writings were widely published a century ago when he referred to—-)

PRINTERS’ INK AS A MEDICINE

Printers ink is saving more lives than any other single agency employed by modern health-workers,” said Edward A. Moree, assistant secretary of the New York State Charities Aid Association, in an address at Rochester the other day.

Right for him!

Printers’ ink is the essential liquor of democracy. Kings hate it. All the manipulators of privilege dread it. It is poison to the tyrant of the Old World and the boss of the New.

It is the “sine qua non” of liberty. Liberty to human souls is what light is to human bodies.

Where there is no liberty there is darkness. Where there is darkness there is disease.

It is printers’ ink that has scared the food fakers. Only at a good round of printers’ ink will the vile, carrion flock of unclean birds that fatten on human credulity and ignorance take flight, they that sell plaster of Paris for bread, carpenter’s glue for candy, and God knows what vileness for fish, flesh, and fowl.

Printers’ ink has prevented more tuberculosis than all the doctors have cured. It has spread right ideas of sanitation, upset old mildewed superstitions, opened windows, lured people outdoors, flooded fearsome brains with truth and despairing hearts with hope.

It has built hospitals and supports them.

It has prevented epidemics, driven hush-mouth authorities to activity in remedial measures of cleansing. Cholera and smallpox were conquered by it; malaria and yellow fever flee before it.

It is all well enough to give an individual Epsom salts or calomel, but what the public needs for what ails it is plenty of printers’ ink.

There is some value in the medical profession, but also a deal of hocus-pocus, as there is in everything that becomes professionalized. The best part of the science of medicine is that part which can be told in plain language so that the common man can understand. Every newspaper ought to have its health department.

What people need to know is the truth about health, about food, and about simple living. The more truth they know the less drugs they will take, the less useless and harmful food they will eat, and the less they will run after religious cure-alls and crazy fads.

The newspaper is the health of the state.

“You may cure individuals of their ills in the privacy of the sickroom,” says Mr. Moree, “but to cure the public of its ills you must get into the newspapers.”

-0-

If you want to read a more complete version of Moree’s feelings about health and newspapers, you can go online and find an article he wrote for The American Journal of Public Health, February, 1916. The article is “Public Health Publicity: The Art of Stimulating and Focusing Public Opinion.”  https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.6.2.97 He  also wrote on “Public Health and Politics.” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000271621606400114

 

 

Us vs. It—Part XI, Reasons to Act

Posted on by
Reply

I bought something from the internet the other day—a photograph from a company that sells archived news photos from decades ago.  No sales tax was charged by the company, which is in a nearby state.

The purchase is a reminder.

If the state needs money—and it surely does—

There is no better time to finally approve collecting a sales tax on purchases made through the internet.

The Missouri General Assembly has gone to great lengths to avoid enacting such a requirement for a decade or more. It has refused to create a collection policy of our own and it has rejected suggestions Missouri join a multi-state compact that collects sales taxes.

Past efforts have been attacked by those who use a faulty argument to avoid the responsibility needed to enact the bill.  “It’s a tax increase,” opponents claim.

Dishwater!

The state sales tax is not—let me emphasize that, NOT—being increased. If the law requiring the state sales tax be paid on purchases on the internet were to pass, the state tax you and I pay when we buy from an internet vendor would be the same as the tax charged when we buy from a hometown business. I should be able to duck a citizen responsibility to contribute to the well-being of others by buying something through the internet.

The argument in favor of an internet sales tax is even more compelling in today’s plague-mangled economy.  Hundreds of local businesses have closed because of stay-at-home orders. Many have not reopened and some never will reopen.  But one of our neighbors (yours and mine) who owns a brick-and-mortar business knows that customers who used to buy things at that store have been buying them on the internet while the store has been closed.

The problem of local folks visiting stores, checking the prices, and then buying the same thing from an internet vendor already was a problem before virus-caused closings forced consumers to increasingly rely in the internet.  Now the question becomes whether they will go back into the hometown stores when they open?

Passing a law requiring Missourians to pay the same sales tax on internet items that they have to pay for local in-store purchases is more symbolic than profitable for the merchant.  But at the same time, promoting the reopening of brick-and-mortar businesses without taking a step that offers a slight whiff of equality with internet vendors seems pretty inconsistent (although you might have a stronger word).

The need to do this has been increased by an executive order signed by our president that he says will resume the expired supplemental unemployment payments.  The executive order will pay $400 but the states will have to contribute $100.

The legality of the executive order aside, Missouri’s general revenue fund needs every penny it can generate whether for supplemental unemployment payments, virus-fighting efforts or maintaining services even at their reduced levels.

Our state leaders have insisted time after time that testing is the key to controlling the Coronavirus in Missouri.  At this point, it’s anyone’s guess whether Congress and our president can agree on a stimulus package that will include billions of dollars for state testing. Lacking that, it’s hard for someone well detached from the ins and outs of the statehouse these days to imagine where the state will find money for that testing without further wrecking the state budget, let alone where it will find money for its share of unemployment payments without the same result.

Where the state of Missouri would find $100 multiplied by several thousand each week is a troubling question.  The governor already has withheld or vetoed hundreds of MILLIONS dollars to balance the state budget.  Schools are opening and education at all levels has been badly bruised by the necessary budget actions. Inflicting deeper cuts to the biggest places to cut, education and social services, could be tragic at a time when schools, in addition their normal expenses, have to face the costs of keeping students, faculty, and staff safe from the virus.

By making Joe or Josephine Missouri pay the same sales tax on a coat from a Internet Inc., as Sarah and Samuel Showme have to pay for the same coat from a Main Street store, Inc., Missouri’s leaders and lawmakers can send a little positive message to the businesses they want to reopen despite health uncertainties at home by collecting needed funds from consumers who want to avoid a few pennies in sales tax by buying online.

The virus has produced all the justification needed to finally impose an internet sales tax. It won’t entirely solve the state’s financial problems. But it could at least partly equalize the competition for the local dollar, provide at least some of the funding for the state’s contribution to the supplemental jobless benefit, and/or ease the depth of any additional budget cuts or withholdings.

Unfortunately, this is a campaign year and candidates will stampede away from advocating anything that can be called, however erroneously, a tax increase no matter how desperate the virus causes the state to be for additional funds. Perhaps we’ll have to wait until January to see if those whose political futures have been determined by then will screw up the courage to take this step.

Invasion

Posted on by
1

Our president has decided cities with Democratic mayors are so hopelessly overridden by violent crime that the only solution is an invasion by federal forces who presumably will get rid of the crime problem.

Your observer isn’t sure criminals in those cities should start “shaking in their boots” because of his rhetoric, but he sure scares the hell out of me.

His insertion of 114 federal law enforcement agents into Portland a couple of weeks ago ostensibly to protect the federal courthouse from “anarchists” (a nice phrase borrowed from the late 19th and early 20th centuries) has shown to many of his critics that he is a man with a can.

Not a man with a PLAN.  A man with a can

—of gasoline.

The behavior of those agents, captured on cell phones and in stories of some of those hauled into vans and spirited away to lockups, does not indicate that this strategy is providing any significant increase in the protection of the general population, nor is it showing any concern for stopping violent crime—unless you consider all protestors to be in the same league with murderers, rapists, armed robbers, arsonists, and others of that ilk.

Based on reports we have read and seen, the presence of these forces has intensified the protests in Portland.

A few days ago Portland’s mayor was among those gassed by federal agents. Our president found that gleeful. “They knocked the hell out of him,” he declared.

How he wants to “help the cities” is something few of us could ever have imagined and few of us want to contemplate. “We’ll go into all of the cities, any of the cities. We’ll put in fifty-thousand, sixty-thousand people that really know what they’re doing. They’re strong. They’re tough. And we can solve these problems so fast,” he told a FOX interviewer last week, adding, “but as you know, we have to be invited in.”

He says it but he doesn’t believe it—the part about being invited in, that is.

So far he has sent or threatened to send agents to Kansas City and Portland, Chicago and Albuquerque.

Let’s do some invasion math—-because what he’s proposing isn’t assistance. It’s invasion.

Number of mayors asking for hundreds (and ultimately thousands perhaps) of agents to come in to fight violent crime: 0

Number of governors who have asked for such actions by the Trump administration: 0

Number of congressional delegations who have sought this “help” in their states: 0

One of the first surges of federal agents was the insertion of 225 of them into Kansas City to help catch and prosecute violent criminals. The administration says it is sending more.

Number of violent crime charges the administration claims have been filed in Kansas City since Operation Legend began: 200

Number of charges really filed by federal prosecutors: 1

Attorney General William Barr last week, speaking of Operation Legend, said, “Just to give you an idea of what’s possible, the FBI went in very strong into Kansas City and within two weeks we’ve had 200 arrests,”

That was news to the U. S. Attorney who told inquisitive reporters for The Kansas City Star that his office has filed ONE charge and it was against a guy with a drug conviction on his record who had a gun. Convicted felons cannot have guns under the law.

Last weekend, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said on FOX News Sunday he welcomed the federal agents in his town, but for a “pinpointed and targeted focus on solving murders.”  But he was frustrated by our president’s rhetoric about the George Floyd Protests and the Black Lives Matter movement because “that’s not the case in Kansas City.”

“What we don’t need is more fuel on the fire from federal agents to make, I think, an exciting political issue.”

He told NBC’s Chuck Todd our president’s talk about Black Lives Matter protests causing murders is “asinine” as well as “inaccurate and unfair” and does nothing to address the real issue—national gun trafficking that make guns readily available on cities’ streets.

There are many people, whether they are supporters of our president or supporters of someone else, who argue the cause of states’ rights. These actions should provide fertile ground for spirited arguments on both sides of whether the federal government has a right to invade cities at the whim of a president, a person who thinks he can order fifty or sixty thousand people “who really know what they’re doing” into a city for whatever purpose he might have—including looking good to his political base by creating “an exciting political issue.” Forget about any invitation.

States rights advocates, in our observations, generally seem to fall on the right side of the political spectrum.  But we haven’t heard or seen any of those folks questioning the administration’s uninvited invasion of cities as a violation of states rights. We might have missed it, but the issue deserves louder discussions than we have heard. There is no doubt that discussion will take place. Among judges.

The administration’s choice of locations for these invasions also is curious. The most recent FBI final non-preliminary data (whatever that means) that we’ve seen for cities with the highest violent crime rate lists none of these cities among the top 20 cities for violent crime. Kansas City is 23rd.

It is interesting that our president was not as concerned about mobilizing federal forces to fight a pandemic as he has been in fighting mostly-legal protests (destroying public buildings is hardly legal). You might recall that early in the pandemic, states were pleading with the administration to help them find the equipment needed to fight the virus, particularly the protective equipment needed to protect those on the front lines.  But the states were told to fend for themselves, that federal help was a “last resort,” at a time when many states were seeing the federal government in precisely that way and our president said he felt no responsibility for the spread of the virus.

The administration’s handling of the pandemic has undermined our president’s re-election hopes.  He hopes to regain that ground by his “tough on crime” approach.  A key question for the public to consider is whether his approach has been appropriate in either case.

He relied on the Tenth Amendment for his defense that fighting the virus was a state responsibility. States and cities see Tenth Amendment as their defense on the local issue of crime.  This crime-fighting strategy already is headed to the courts. It appears the pandemic defense is headed to the ballot box.

The polls indicate most potential voters consider his response (or non-response, depending on the way the question was answered) in the spring produced tragic results. We can only hope the crime fighting strategy of the summer does not also turn tragic before the courts define the bounds of presidential power exercised or suggested by the man with a can.

(For those who lean right who see this entry as an attack on them, we plan our next entry to question the left, with the rights of states at the center of that argument, too.)

Dr. Crane appreciated being alive

Posted on by
Reply

(In these times of sickness we might find ourselves dwelling on the things that we miss more than we spend time dwelling on the things we don’t realize we have. When conditions might prompt otherwise repressed thoughts of our mortality, it can be better for us to dwell on the day we are given.  To do so, Dr. Frank Crane suggests, makes us something we might prefer NOT to think we are—)

THE SENSUALIST

Do you know, said my old friend Miss Dean, professor of English literature in Blank College, and about the last person in the world you would accuse of being gross, she being a typical highbrow, blue-stocking, and all that sort of thing—Do you know, she said, that the older I grow the more I am getting to be a sensualist?

I am duly shocked, I replied, but suppose of course you intended to shock me so as to bring out some unusual truth. So go ahead.

What I mean is that I am more and more inclining to the belief that we do not emphasize enough the sheer delight of merely being alive. If we would oftener take stock of our little satisfactions, the unnoticed sensations of pleasure that we habitually slur over and take for granted, we would increase the average of our contentment.

I got to thinking this morning of how many things there are in my daily experiences that are agreeable.  I was amazed at how many ways there are in which Nature contrives to make me feel good.

For instance, to begin at the beginning of the day, I like to get up.  I dearly love the first minutes of being awake. To stretch my limbs and shake off sleep, to roll out of bed and put my nose out of the window and drink in the fresh early air, and see the young sunlight, not yet glaring and hot, but full of the promise of life, a sweet light and soft, and to see the trees seeming so glad and virile—oh! It’s great!

And then I like my bath. I like to get all my clothes off and enjoy the touch of the air on my skin as if I were an animal.  We are all animals, but it does us good to go back healthily to animality some time during the day—touch, like Atlas, our mother Earth and the elemental air and light from which come our tides of strength.

I love a good souse in the water. I love the feel of the towel when I rub dry. I like dressing. Putting on clothes with me is always an interesting ceremony.  From lacing my shoes to coming my hair, it is more than a routine—it is a ritual.

I love breakfast.  Thank goodness, I have an appetite. I don’t eat much, but I love to eat.  And when I think of all the living creatures upon the earth, oxen and sheep, birds and horses and fishes, that share with me this delight of taking food, I have a sense of intimate communion with the universe.

Why do some people speak contemptuously of eating?  To me it’s wonderful to think of the infinite ministries of matter to our spirits by way of the palate. Eggs and butter, fish, flesh and fowl, grains and fruits, honey, cream, and, best and most angelic of all—water!  What are those all but Nature’s children vying with each other to please their human guest?

Then there are a thousand other things I like. I like the sun, and to sit in the shade, to walk, and to rest afterward. I like colors, the reds, browns, and blacks of my books, the green of my blotter, the yellow of my pencil, the blue of my rug, and all the other numberless shades, with their blendings and contrasts, that make up the vast orchestra of color continually playing for my benefit.

I like breathing.  Did you ever stop to think how delicious air is?

I like the thousand and one things that we usually refer to as boresome. I like to have my hands manicured. I like to ride on the trolley-car. I like my favorite rocking chair. I like my pen and my pad of paper, and to see words grow under my hand. I like a good novel. I like a good road and a hedge and a clump of bushes. I like to ride in a taxicab through the crowded streets. I like to look at multitudes. And I like to be alone.

I like walls and pavements. I like new gloves and nice underwear. I like, oh! Passionately, a new hat and a gown fresh from the maker. I like for a man to talk to me as if I interested him. I like little children. I like old folks. I like big husky workmen lifting loads. I like people who get excited over purely intellectual problems. I like to make money and to spend it. I like to see young people in love. I like a church, and a theatre, and bridge, and a roomful of chat and laughter. I like jokes, and music, and soldiers marching.

I fear I am a hopeless sensualist. For Stevenson’s jingle grows on me:

“The world is so full of a number of things

I’m sure we should all be happy as kings.”