Author: Ken Goetz

Discriminatory DEI

Two Opposing Views on DEI. Which do You Favor?

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Two opposing views on DEI. Which do you favor? A couple of days ago, I read two newspaper articles on DEI, one in the Wall Street Journal, and the other in USA Today (the latter was originally published in the Louisville Courier Journal). The opinions of the writers are crystal clear from the titles of their articles.

First Article

Professor Kevin Jon Williams wrote Why I’m Saying No to NIH’s Racial Preferences. (Dr. Williams is a physician, a professor of cardiovascular sciences at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine, and a visiting fellow at Do No Harm). Dr. Williams’s article made me thankful that my dependence on research grants from the National Institutes of Health ended decades ago when I closed that phase of my life. How things have changed at the NIH since then! I learned from this article that the NIH now has a little DEI box to check. Dr. Williams objects to that. Here is what he writes about his upcoming NIH grant application:

My quandary comes down to whether I should “check the box” on an upcoming NIH grant application attesting to my recent African heritage. Since at least 2015, the NIH has asserted its belief in the intrinsic superiority of racially diverse research teams, all but stating that such diversity influences funding decisions. My family’s origins qualify me under the federal definition of African-American. Yet I feel it’s immoral and narcissistic to use race to gain an advantage over other applicants. All that should matter is the merit of my application and the body of my work, which is generally accepted as foundational in atherosclerosis research.

Here are other pertinent excerpts of his article:

The NIH’s recent announcement commands applicants “to recruit individuals from diverse backgrounds, including individuals from underrepresented groups for participation in the study team.”

I’m angry at the National Institutes of Health for putting me in this position. I’m even angrier it has done so in the name of racial equity. (Dr. Williams, through his father, is part Bantu, a major ethnolinguistic grouping in West, Central and Southern Africa.)

My Opinion

I am firmly in Dr. Williams’s camp. NIH should fund the best research proposals, and not simply provide monies partly based on the race of the applicants. That approach likely squeezes out funding for some of the best scientific approaches. Beyond that, it is tinged with racism. The goal of NIH should be achieve scientific advancement, not to meddle in affirmative action.

Second Article

Professor Ricky L. Jones wrote Colleges exploit Black athletes for March Madness. It’s time to boycott anti-DEI universities, (Dr. Jones is a professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville.)

Dr. Jones is a proponent of DEI. He begins by quoting an article by University of Southern California Professor Shaun Harper, and writing, “He rightfully points out that Black people represent a disproportionate percentage of college student-athletes who populate the high-revenue sports of basketball and football at predominantly white institutions, both nationwide and in states that are against diversity.”

Magically, deceptive anti-DEI advocates and politicians never bring this up. Why? Maybe because these Black boys make white-controlled athletic conferences, universities, coaches, athletic directors, university presidents, television networks and others insane amounts of money.

Another obvious fact

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to point out to Dr. Jones that he too fails to bring up an obvious fact, namely that the only place that DEI had never taken hold in most universities is in their athletic teams. If DEI were applied to college basketball, football, track, and other sports, two outcomes would be inevitable. Outcome 1: the quality of any given college sport would decline (as would professional sports if DEI invaded there as well), and Outcome 2: fewer black athletes would receive scholarships. Neither of these would appeal to me, nor, I assume, would they to Dr. Jones.

I also think that Dr. Jones would agree with me on another issue, that being the obvious fact that black children in this country receive overall an inferior education in their early school years when compared with white children. The solution for that, in my opinion, is to improve their early schooling. I’ve discussed this point elsewhere (see here).

Dr. Jones raises points we need to be aware of, but I believe much of his article is more of a ranting screed rather than a thoughtful analysis of our current situation. Here are two more paragraphs from his article.

Be clear, student-athletes will lose if they are left to stand alone – and they will in most cases as many fearful Black administrators, faculty and staff have muzzled themselves on PWI campuses (predominantly white institutions). The ball players are completely unprepared for the assaults of white supremacy. They are too young and largely anesthetized by flawed education and socialization.

Like most miseducated, misled and cowed Black people, they cannot adjust when debates dive into history, political ideology and structural marginalization – or outright ignore core grievances and alter the discussions altogether.

My Opinion

I believe that college athletic programs should recruit the best student-athletes available, and yes, they more likely will be Black than white (to use Dr. Jones capitalization preferences). By the same token, I believe that college student admissions, and equally important, college faculty appointments, should also be based on the best applicants available. In blunt terms, that means that the decision should be colorblind, that applicant’s race should not enter into the decision. The vital element should be ability and past performance. Unfortunately that often is not the case in present-day academia.

Again, I will stress that the place where many Black students are slighted is in their early years of education. That is where racial differences come into play, and this is where action is desperately needed. How that goal can be achieved is open to interpretation, but I would suggest that Dr. Jones, Black Lives Matter, and all fair-minded groups, focus their attention on that problem. Having said that, readers of this blog know that I’m not a fan of governmental intervention. President Johnson’s war on poverty, much of it still in play some six decades after its inception, has done little to influence poverty, and essentially nothing to improve early Black education.

Regarding the specific effects of using DEI in faculty employment and advancement, I submit that it has produced negative results. One prime recent bit of evidence is the case of Harvard President Claudine Gay, who resigned early this year over furor of her handling of on-campus antisemitism, along with lingering charges of her plagiarism. Nevertheless, she remains on campus as a professor, earning nearly $900,000 annually. 

What puzzles me is how she got the job in the first place. According to various media sources, she has been accused of  more than 40 instances of plagiarism in her academic work, apparently starting with her thesis (see example above). I cannot imagine someone with her history (or anyone of any race) ascending to the presidency of Harvard without a strong whiff of DEI in that person’s corner.

According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Dr. Gay, before becoming Harvard’s president, expanded diversity bureaucracies and chilled free speech on that campus by creating new DEI positions and creating a task force that recommended portraits of white men be taken down (see here).

Damaged Harvard brand

Clearly, her plagiarism has damaged Harvard’s brand, first of all for elevating a person with suspect credentials to its presidency, and second because Harvard is strict about student plagiarism. To illustrate, here are two excerpts from the Harvard Guide to Using Sources:

“It is expected that all homework assignments, projects, lab reports, papers, theses, and examinations and any other work submitted for academic credit will be the student’s own. Students should always take great care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources. The term “sources” includes not only primary and secondary material published in print or online, but also information and opinions gained directly from other people. Quotations must be placed properly within quotation marks and must be cited fully. . . .

Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College.”

Consequences

The above rules do have consequences. For example, during the 2020-2021 school year (the latest year I found), Harvard forced 27 students to withdraw from the college, a number of them for plagiarism. It is difficult for me to understand why Harvard students are being forced to withdraw from their college for not distinguishing “their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources,” while a Harvard professor, who clearly has not distinguished her words from others, continues to hold her position and collect nearly $900,000 per year.

Is Diversity necessarily positive?

This is a key question, but one must first ask, diversity of what? If one speaks of diversity of opinion, I would say it is absolutely positive, especially in higher education (where sadly it is lacking, and leaning heavily leftist and woke). On the other hand, if one speaks of genetic diversity, one might pause to consider the deep conflicts that develop between individuals of different ideologies, such as those favoring either Israelis or Palestinians, Russians or Ukrainians, Chinese or Taiwanese,  Hutu or Tutsi tribes, or choose your own example. I think it is obvious that combining individuals with differing preexisting biases would be unlikely to produce an especially harmonious unit.

My Personal Conclusions

1. DEI is a form of discrimination that, by its very nature, can only lower the quality of whatever type of organization is involved, be it educational, scientific, governmental, or economic.

2. Racial discrimination has been rampant in the past, but simply changing the race or races to be discriminated against (through Affirmative Action and DEI effects on new generations) does nothing to assuage the pains of past wrongs; rather, it simply embraces a new form discrimination.

3. Most black children today continue to receive inferior early educations, and thus many fall behind. This clearly is where the problem lies. Give these children the education they deserve, and they will effortlessly compete with other races.  I submit this as the path to become a truly colorblind country, and to provide liberty and justice for all.

 

Evidence That Covid Arose in a Wuhan Laboratory

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Evidence that Covid arose in a Wuhan laboratory continues to accumulate. As readers here may recall, I have argued several times that the deadly Covid-19 virus (more specifically  known as SARS-CoV-2 ) most likely was developed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (See here, here, here, and here for those posts). My opinion was further validated last week by Nicholas Wade, former science editor of the New York Times, who reported that recently released information “makes a formidable case that the virus is the product of laboratory synthesis, not of nature.” (see that here).

Now take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then mull over Mr. Wade’s second paragraph. “This startling fact will probably take some time to sink into the national consciousness, given the mainstream media’s sustained inability to report the issue objectively. Editors have failed to think beyond the extreme politicization that requires liberals to oppose the lab-leak hypothesis. Science journalists are too beholden to their sources to suspect that virologists would lie to them about the extent of their profession’s responsibility for a catastrophic pandemic.”

Here is the thrust of the recently released information evaluated by Mr. Wade. In 2018, a group led by Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York, Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina applied to the Pentagon for $14 million grant to alter bat viruses that possibly might jump to humans, and then immunize bats so they wouldn’t infect soldiers in the region. They proposed to increase the viruses’ infectivity by inserting into them a genetic element known as a furin cleavage site.

 

They also proposed in that grant application to assemble SARS-like viruses from six sections of lab-synthesized DNA, including in their budget a cost estimate for purchase of the BsmBI restriction enzyme which apparently is required for such assembly.  In 2022, without knowing these details, three biologists proposed that if SARS-CoV 2 had been generated in a lab by a standard method, it would have been assembled from six sections of lab-synthesized DNA with the help of biological agent BsmBI. (Hmm, does that sound familiar?) Furthermore, on analyzing the virus’s structure, the biologists found evidence for the seams between sections and other distinctive marks of the assembly process, causing a molecular biologist at Rutgers University to say the genetic evidence raises “to the level of a smoking gun” that the virus was manufactured. Oh, importantly, Covid-19 also has a furin cleavage site.

Peter Daszak (president of the EcoHealth Alliance, the enterprise that funneled substantial funds from the National Institutes of Health to the Wuhan Institute of Virology) was known to favor laboratory work in Wuhan even though that virus laboratory had a lesser level of safety (BLS2) than his collaborator’s laboratory in North Carolina (BSL3) See here for a breakdown of laboratory security differences. Daszak is also the man who drafted the Lancet’s medical journal letter that was signed by a group of virologists who claimed that Covid-19 had developed naturally. (See more on that story here).

Here is how Nicholas Wade ends his recent article: “Chinese officials have demanded that the U.S. ‘stop defaming China’ by raising the possibility of a lab leak. One piece is missing from the puzzle— the identity of the parent viruses from which SARS-CoV-2 was derived. The Chinese authorities have rigorously suppressed all information about the viruses being kept in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the documentary and scientific evidence already assembled seems sufficient to understand the genesis of the pandemic that killed millions.”

Do you agree with that conclusion? Covid has changed our world. I submit that we now have convincing evidence that Covid arose in a Wuhan laboratory, and at least part of that work likely was funded by our National Institutes of Health.

 

The Mess at our Southern Border

Posted on by Ken Goetz

The mess at our southern border is, without any shred of doubt, attributable to the gaggle of Incompetents in our nation’s Capitol. The nincompoops in Washington D.C., namely our Congressmen, Senators, and especially our president, are the enablers of this fiasco.

My most recent furor over our broken border was triggered by the newspaper column I read last night. I’ll reproduce parts of it in red below so you can evaluate the man’s arguments, which align with my own. The column began as follows:

“Every sensible immigration policy has two objectives: (1) to regain control of our borders so that it is we who decide who enters, and (2) to find a way to normalize and legalize the situation of the . . . illegals among us.

The columnist acknowledged what most of us feel, namely that no one of goodwill wants to see illegals suffer. Then he brought up the obvious: each time we legalize illegals (as of course we have done), we thereby create an incentive for more folks to slip into our country illegally. He documented this by pointing to the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration reform law of 1986. That law allowed some three million illegals then living here to get permanent residencies here.  But, the columnist said, there were far more illegals inside our country as he tapped his keyboard, evaluating the mess at our southern border.

He offered a strong recommendation, an option we all know about: “Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won’t do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols.  . . .”

“Of course it will be ugly. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don’t tell me this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that’s a prison. When you build a wall to keep people out, that’s sovereignty.  . . . Of course, no barrier will be foolproof. But it doesn’t have to be.  It simply has to reduce the river of illegals to a manageable trickle.

“This is no time for mushy compromise,” he wrote near the end of his column. And indeed it was not; nor is it now. Let me explain. This is not a recent column. It was written nearly two decades ago. First A Wall –Then Amnesty appeared in the April 7. 2006, edition of the Washington Post. For reference, George W. Bush was president at the time. Yet now, the wound at our southern border is festering with greater urgency than it was when Charles Krauthammer’s column was written. The mess at our southern borders continues.

Question of the day: What is the current crowd in Washington doing about it?

FYI: The column I quoted from was republished on page 169 in this collection of Krauthammer’s columns (See reviews of that book here).

NOTICE: As I mentioned in my previous post (way back at the beginning of this year, by far my longest pause since I started this blog) I planned to be absent for a while. The immediate cause was my temporary frustration over losing key additions to my post evaluating Joe Biden (see that here), but I also had other compelling reasons. I had been dawdling over a couple of major projects that needed to be finished. Since then, I’ve made some progress on those (but alas, they are not yet completed). I think I understand why I’ve been a laggard. The reason seems obvious. Having logged over 92 years on this planet, I still resolutely step to the beat of my drummer, but his rhythm has slowed, his beat grown fainter. Yet I am thankful that he marches on.

Joe Biden’s Presidential Grade so far? A grim “F”

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Please read housekeeping note at end of this post!

Joe Biden’s presidential grade so far? A grim F is what he deserves. This is doubly tragic, because Biden seems determined to run again in the 2024 presidential election, and his  likely opponent will be Donald Trump, whose presidential escapades prompted me, as regular readers of this blog may recall, to grade his White House performance as a D- (see that post here).

If you’re a Biden supporter (or a Trump supporter, or none of either), please read on. Consider the present situation for a moment. Our country seems doomed to have a gloomy election next year, specifically a race between an angry, bumbling D- and a dense, blundering F? Imagine how you will feel with these two geriatrics lurching breathlessly around the country, each struggling to reach the finish line in November.

Having already assessed Mr. Trump’s presidential performance, I’ll now explain why I believe Mr. Biden deserves his ignominious F. I begin by acknowledging that I’m stunned that his most recent approval ratings hover around 35%. How, I wonder, can a third of our populous approve of his performance? Certainly party loyalty is strong in certain individuals, but I can’t fathom how even his strongest backers refuse to acknowledge his mental decline. Even last spring a Washington Post/ABC poll, 63% of over 1,000 voting-age respondents believed Mr Biden was not sharp enough to serve effectively as leader of the free world (See here), and his blunders have continued since then. All one has to do is watch a few TV clips to see he’s cognitively impaired. (I refuse to lay his weakened cerebration and uncertain balance entirely on his age; I’m a full decade older than he is, yet I don’t stumble around like he does. Nor do I mumble as much.)

Setting aside his mental and physical lapses, I believe that three main reasons account for his low popularity. These are the 1, the economy, 2, the border crisis, and 3, a string of suspicious family financial dealings. One could extend the evidence each of these into a long chapter, but I’ll just touch on some highlights each one.

1: The Economy

Earlier in his administration, Biden went big on spending, submitting an unprecedented $6 trillion budget, this compared to Trump’s proposed budget of $4.8 trillion in the last year of his term. Biden’s goal purportedly was a way to thing green and to spend our way to prosperity. How did it work out? Well, inflation took off, but not wages. What happened to the average hourly earnings of all private workers? Here’s the information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As the Wall Street Journal explained, there was a 3.16% drop in real earnings for the average worker across the 29 months of the Biden presidency as of mid-2023.

You probably have heard a variation of the old line: Statistics don’t lie, but liars often use statistics.  This seems to be especially true in our nation’s capitol. Here’s how Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen touted “Bidenomics” in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal just before Christmas. In her piece, she said, “wages have risen more than prices since 2019,” thus implying that Biden’s plan had benefited workers. 

Can you spot the misdirection in her statement? Well, former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee Phil Gramm, and Prof. Donald Boudreaux did.

In a letter to the editor of the WSJ earlier this week they wrote, “The problem with this claim is that President Biden wasn’t in office a single day in 2019—or in 2020. From the beginning of 2019 to the end of 2020, with Donald Trump still in the White House, real weekly earnings rose by $69 (or 6.2%) and annual median income rose by $3,592. But from the beginning of the Biden administration to the third quarter of 2023, the last quarter for which we have data, real weekly earnings fell by more than $25 (or 2.1%), pushing real annual median income down by $1,306. Oh, and they added: “Maybe Bidenomics works only when Mr. Biden isn’t President.”

2, The Border Crisis

Photo from BBC News

This is a big one.

Here’s what CNN reported last Friday: Border authorities encountered more than 225,000 migrants along the US-Mexico border this month, marking the highest monthly total recorded since 2000, according to preliminary Homeland Security statistics shared with CNN. Over the course of the month, authorities dealt with more than 10,000 migrants crossing daily until more recently, when the numbers began to drop.

This onslaught wasn’t particularly worrisome for so called sanctuary cities; these large cities are almost uniformly under control of Democrats. (According to the Washington Post, sanctuary cities are communities with policies that limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal authorities’ efforts to deport immigrants. For the past few decades, “U.S. sanctuary city policies have been chiefly about welcoming immigrants . . .)

How times have changed! In the past few years, the burden of rampant illegal migration was felt mostly by the southern border states and Florida. That is no longer true. Migrants now are being shipped northward by a stream of buses, most notably from Texas by order of Governor Greg Abbott.

 Effects of illegal migration on northern cities

Chicago

“Chicago’s migrant crisis spirals out of control: City spent nearly $1 million on failed camp before pulling the plug – as officials now IMPOUND buses bringing migrants to the city from Texas on Gov. Greg Abbott’s orders” Headline from UK Daily Mail. Subheadings: * * *The city spent over $985,000 on the shuttered migrant camp at Brighton Park * * * There are currently more than 13,000 migrants staying in Chicago’s shelter system and the city has spent more than 250M handing the crisis this year.                            (The full article in the Daily Mail [12/15/2023] is well worth reading. See it here.)

New York City

And things are really getting dicey in New York City. The cost of sheltering migrants in the Big Apple could run to about $12 billion by summer of 2025 if the flow of migrants continues apace with current numbers, this according to Politico (see story here). Apparently more than 160,000 migrants have entered New York City since the spring of 2022. See an up-to-date New York Daily News story (1 Jan 2024) here.   *  *  *  *  * I could go on, but you get the point.

 3. A String of Suspicious Financial Dealings

 

Housekeeping note:

I have decided to take a break from blogging. Why? Yesterday, when working on this article, I mistakenly  clicked on “publish” instead of “preview,” so you received an unbaked loaf of my bread. Major frustration #1. Today, I spent three hours cleaning things up, adding Denver to Chicago and New York regarding the illegal migrant crisis. I tuned up the entire article, much improving it and adding interesting details, none of which you will ever see. Why? When my post was finally ready to go, I moved to another part of my “backdoor,” where I work on my blog. and when I came back to my new draft, all of the careful changes and additions I had made were gone, unable to be retrieved. That was major frustration #2. Am I going to take time to repeat those three hours? Not a chance!

I’m cruising (or maybe crashing) into 92 in a few days, and I’d prefer to do that without a bundle of frustrations. So, I’m taking a break of at least a month, maybe more. Writerken.com will remain open, so I’d love to have you browse through what I’ve written here, over 100 articles are available on topics such as politics, classical medical experiments, information on aging, health, travel, literature, culture, and whatnot.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The photo of fallen Biden was on CNN

scowling Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s Final Grade, Re-posted with Addendum

Posted on by Ken Goetz

I’m re-posting Donald Trump’s Final Grade (it appeared here nearly three years ago) for four important reasons:

1) Odds are high that Trump will again be the Republican candidate for our presidency.

2) If he does become a candidate, he will face a cacophony of denunciation from the mainstream media.

3) The flood of denunciation will almost certainly effect his ability to perform well (see below for explanation of this).

4) For comparison, I plan to write soon about Joe Biden’s less-than-stellar performance to date.

Here is my original post:

A number of articles I’ve seen, along with opinions from certain syndicated columnists, make the case that the Covid-19 pandemic defeated Donald Trump. I have trouble swallowing that. The virus clearly shifted some votes, but I would argue that Donald Trump knocked himself right out of the Oval Office.

The reason seems obvious. Trump never learned to be presidential. He spent his four years in office squabbling. He flooded his nights with ridiculous tweets, and in daylight threw his abrasive jabs and roundhouse rants at practically everyone. In the end, enough of those blows turned around and smacked him solidly on the jaw, putting him down for the count.

I suppose one might argue that his bluster was caused by the press, the majority of which pummeled him at every turn, putting him on the defensive, but I don’t buy that either. He had shown plenty of nastiness even as a candidate while skirmishing with others for the Republican nomination.

I think he won the first time because he was the outsider itching to drain the Washington swamp and yank some federal tentacles off our backs. That sounded good to me, as it apparently still does to most citizens. As I wrote in my Washington’s Swamp post, in December only 15% of us approved of the work of our Washington legislators.

Not that it matters to anyone else, but I give Trump a D- for his term. In my system, he avoided a flat out failing grade because he accomplished some things I believe have been good for our country. But he sits tightly wedged near the bottom of the presidential barrel because he was often an embarrassment while in office.

URGENT NOTE: If you’re among the 85% of us disappointed with our congressional crowd, and if you know anyone capable of draining gigantic swamps, someone reasonably stable and fortified with stamina galore, give that person a nudge toward greatness.

End of original post. Now some updated thoughts:

It is now clear that Trump’s presidency was thrown violently off course by the false Trump-Russia collusion narrative. If you don’t know the origin of the narrative, it was funded by the Clinton campaign and it was trumpeted loudly by the New York Times, the Washington Post, many other left-leaning big city newspapers. Ironically, the Times and the Post even won Pulitzer Prizes for their stories touting the fake Steele dossier that ignited the fuss. The collusion narrative was also frequently highlighted on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and MSNBC. But emerging facts, especially those in the Durham report (See here) turned that narrative around.

Here are a summary of the factual story, as revealed by a few paragraphs taken from a more reliable CNN report (The Steele dossier: A reckoning, written in November 2021). Read it carefully. There are some bombshells in it.

When it came to light in January 2017, just days before Donald Trump took office, the so-called Steele dossier landed like a bombshell and sent shockwaves around the world with its salacious allegations about Trump and his supposed ties to Russia.

But five years later, the credibility of the dossier has significantly diminished.

A series of investigations and lawsuits have discredited many of its central allegations and exposed the unreliability of Steele’s sources. They also raise serious questions about the political underpinnings of some key explosive claims about Trump by shedding new light on the involvement of some well-connected Democrats in the dossier, and separate efforts to prod the FBI to investigate ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, civil lawsuits in the US and the United Kingdom, and an internal Justice Department review have now fully unspooled the behind-the-scenes role that some Democrats played in this saga. They paid for the research, funneled information to Steele’s sources, and then urged the FBI to investigate Trump’s connections to Russia.

Nearly a year passed before the full truth came out about the financing: The money flowed from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to law firm Perkins Coie, to the research company Fusion GPS, and then ultimately to Steele, who got $168,000.

But Democratic involvement in Steele’s work was much deeper than previously known. Court filings from the Durham inquiry recently revealed that some information in the dossier originated from Charles Dolan, 71, a public relations executive with expertise in Russian affairs who had a decades-long political relationship with the Clinton family. He has not been accused of any crimes.

But that isn’t the end of the story. Obama and Biden knew the truth, as did the Deep State

“In July 2016, CIA Director John Brennan rushed to the White House to brief then-President Barack Obama and Joe Biden, our current president, about alarming new evidence uncovered by American intelligence. The agency had obtained reliable information that “Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians.” (page 81 of the Durham report).

But not only did Obama and Biden know about Hillary’s treachery, so did other top officials who were also secretly briefed. These officials included Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey. This is made clear from some of Brennan’s handwritten notes. Yet, for the next three years all of these high-ranking officials remained silent about the CIA’s findings. How deep can the Washington Swamp (see here) get?

Final questions:

Do you think it possible that the same forces described above would surge again against Donald Trump if he were elected president for a second term? Do you think that Trump would be both vengeful and vindictive during his term? Do you think such a scenario would be good for our country? Are these important questions?

If this post interests you, please pass it on. And if you are not a subscriber, I would appreciate you signing on.

Stay tuned. I’ll get to Biden next.

 

Biden or Trump? Neither! We Need Better Candidates.

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Biden or Trump? Neither! We need better candidates. Our upcoming primary elections must rid us of this pathetic pair of presidential nominees. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I’ve harped on this topic a number of times earlier (see here, here, and here), but the situation continues to needle me. And I’m not alone. Most citizens feel the same way I do.

According to a recent CNN poll, President Biden has a job approval of only 39% (see here). And 61% of those polled said they disapproved of his performance. Biden’s negativity seems to be related primarily to our inflationary economy, surging crime, international turmoil, and the uncontrolled influx of illegals at our borders.

Ex-president Trump, Biden’s chief competitor, hardly glitters in comparison. Of those polled, only 42% had a favorable view of Mr. Trump, while 54% expressed an unfavorable one. Trump’s record when president likely plays a role in his low rating, but there is no doubt that his labile personality and revengeful nature contribute to his unpopularity. I have lost count of how many of his former allies he has turned against.

More reasons:

Other crucial factors contribute to the unpopularity of these two. Both are oldsters with diminished brain power. Biden leads in this downward mental race in my opinion, with Trump running not far behind. Both are also vindictive, with Trump, I believe, outdistancing his rival in this category. Both know they are unpopular. So, why don’t they give up their selfish goals, drop out of the race, and benefit us all?

It’s worth recalling that Trump holds the record for presidential impeachments, having collected two (half of the four in U.S. history), but Biden may be closing in. It seems likely he will face impeachment early next year regarding the string of foreign payments made to his son, Hunter, and other members of the Biden family (including himself?).

Legal problems as well:

Trump, of course, is also entangled in plenty of legal problems. According to an October report from The Hill (see here) he is defending himself against a total of 91 criminal charges spread among four state and federal criminal indictments. Separately, he is also a party in more than a half-dozen civil lawsuits.

The legal noise is not as loud for our current president, but he and his family are under investigation by the House Oversight Committee for the millions of dollars collected by Biden family members from foreign countries, most of these proceeds having made their way through shell companies.

Final thoughts:

After skimming lightly over a number of each candidates drawbacks, it’s perhaps not surprising that the same CNN poll mentioned above also reported that neither man is viewed as much of a straight shooter;  just 42% thought Biden is honest and trustworthy while only 33% felt the same way about Trump.

So, after considering the obvious flaws of each candidate, why should we rush as numbly as lemmings toward yet another contest between these two uninspiring individuals? We undoubtedly could identify hundreds of men or women (or even thousands) far better qualified to lead our country through its cauldron of present-day problems. Let us begin the search! Qualified volunteers will be welcomed.

 

Doctor examining patient record

Here’s More About Burned-Out Doctors

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Here’s more about burned-out doctors. After I posted my physician burnout report (see that here), someone sent me the program of the American Conference on Physician Health that was held just days earlier (October 11-13) in Palm Desert, California. (For more resources on doctor burnout click here.)

This was the 7th annual Conference on Physician Health, each one sponsored by the American Medical Association, the Mayo Clinic and Stanford Medicine. These conferences were designed “to inspire organizations throughout the country to seek ways to bring back the joy in medicine for all our physicians.”  (My emphasis.)

I was told that a doctor who attended the most recent conference returned to work and discovered he had 35 patients to see. A prescription for more burnout?

Have these conferences been popular? The digital program of this year’s event indicated, on the cover page, that it was SOLD OUT! And there was a waiting list!

What topics have these conferences covered?

Here’s a sample of some representative titles from this year’s conference. Many focused on instilling well-being in burned-out doctors.

  • Breaking down barriers around emergency medicine physicians seeking mental health care.
  • An innovative medical staff-run approach to the drivers of burnout and joy in work.
  • Association of physician burnout with perceived EHR (electronic health records) work, stress, and potentially actionable factors.
  • Creating a culture of wellness.
  • Drowning in email: the cost of email burden on physician burnout.
  • Heal thyself: leveraging CME education to improve provider wellness behavior.
  • Pebble in my shoe: a program to address micro-annoyances encountered by physicians in the workplace.
  • Significant higher rates of burnout at a tertiary eye care center found after the start of COVID-19.
  • The impact of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) breathing on mental health and well-being of physicians: a Canadian experience.
  • The intentional well-being retreat: an evaluation of a wellness retreat for physicians and advanced practice providers.

ALL OF THESE TOPICS (AND MANY MORE) WERE PART OF POSTER PRESENTATIONS ON THE FIRST AFTERNOON OF THE THREE-DAY CONFERENCE. CLEARLY, THIS IS A BIG TOPIC AMONG PHYSICIANS.

Conclusion

Doctor burnout is real. And it obviously is bad for physicians — and for their patients. It is time for governmental and insurance regulators to back off and allow these professional men and women to do their jobs as they know best!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Medicare advantage changes this interaction.

Is Your Doctor Burned Out? Probably.

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Is your doctor burned out? Probably. According to a recent “Physician Burnout and Wellness” survey conducted by Medical Economics, two out of every three physicians (68%), are feeling burned out. Should you care? As a patient, absolutely. Read on.

“I feel a loss of empathy and compassion for my patients,” said one burned-out doctor.

“Everyone I know wants to leave medicine,” said another. “The paperwork and administrative burden of charting keep us from spending quality time with patients.”

Not the best of news, is it? When you consult with your doctor, you expect that person to be alert and competent, but individuals with burnout, physicians included, often find it difficult to concentrate; they become irritable. They under-perform. A clear and detailed discussion of burnout appears on the Mayo Clinic website, see that by clicking here. Please note: Although I cited the Mayo reference, burnout is NOT a medical diagnosis.

More discouraging quotes

“It makes it hard to fully engage in my practice,” said one doctor. “I’m counting the days until retirement,” said another

How times have changed! When I entered medical school, which admittedly was a very long time ago (late 1950s), medical practice was one of the most prestigious of occupations, right up there with being a justice on the Supreme Court.

And why not? During the first sixty years of the Twentieth Century, physicians had considerable professional autonomy. In that golden age of medicine, doctors controlled their practices. They were independent and provided professional care directly to patients. Physicians performed a meaningful service, and the patient usually paid for that service. If the patient could not pay, the debt usually was written off. Doctors still made good money.  They were highly respected, they usually developed close doctor/patient relationships, and their work was lucrative. Satisfaction among doctors was, not surprisingly, high.

 

Doctor at work

Doctors still are generally well compensated (although there is great variability among specialties), but burnout has replaced satisfaction in many cases. Why? Primarily, I think, because doctors have lost much of their independence. After having undergone four rigorous years of medical school, new M.D. graduates now continue their training in residencies that traditionally last from three to seven years, depending up on the speciality a young physician chooses.

In short, doctors have never been better trained than they are now. They are intimately acquainted with the human body. They know in detail how it functions in both health and disease. Today’s doctors have mastered a variety of medical or surgical skills within the speciality they have chosen. They are exceedingly well-equipped to diagnose and treat whatever ails their patients.  Nevertheless, after all of that preparation, most physicians now work under constraints, and they follow orders from people who know little or nothing about medicine.

As one surgeon wrote, he had “watched as medicine slowly evolved into the domain of technicians, bookkeepers, and clerks.”

Today’s altered environment

In today’s altered environment, most patients do not pay directly for their personal health care (although they may pay partially through a co-pay). Rather, the government (Medicare or Medicaid), or an insurance company, pays the bulk of today’s medical charges. These soulless payers obviously are not grateful recipients of the care, of which they receive none. Insurance companies are in the health game to “make” money and they are eager to limit their payments for such care. The government wants to “save” money, and it also strives to limit payments. So, both government and insurance agencies have set up rules and guidelines as to what they will pay for. Pre-authorization may needed before treatment can begin.

The government and insurance companies clearly now rule the roost. Medical care has transformed into the healthcare industry. Think of all the government employees, insurance employees, hospital employees, and more (basically administrators of one sort or another) who earn their livelihoods today from the “healthcare industry” by providing rules for doctors to follow, and by monitoring how well physicians comply. So, the earnings of this growing crowd of employees have greatly increased the total cost of medical care (as I’ve pointed out earlier, see here, the the New England Journal of Medicine reported that U.S. national health care expenditures increased from 4% of the gross domestic product in 1950 to nearly 18% of GDP in 2019. Now nearly one dollar out of every five spent in the USA now goes to “healthcare,” yet I would argue that this dramatic explosion of healthcare employees has not improved medical care one whit. But, sadly, the rules and regulations cooked up by these administrators are a major cause of physician burnout. (New advances in medical equipment have, of course, also contributed to the dramatic increase in medical costs, but the additional personnel costs are substantial.)

One burned out physician was blunt. “We need less paperwork and regulations.” “We need less busy work,” echoed another. Have you ever wondered whether your doctor enjoys looking at his computer screen while talking with you?

A volcanic shift, government induced

This volcanic shift was initiated decades ago, it seems clear, by the federal government, the same government responsible for the exorbitant costs of today’s college tuitions (see here for my discussion of how the federal government set in motion the explosion in college costs). Government is vital for a free society, but there are areas, in my opinion, where it blunders in and mucks things up.

Medicare, enacted into law in 1965, began the inexorable encroachment on the practice of medicine. As the government began to pay for certain forms of medical care, it also added regulations. Not surprisingly, with government money came government control. An excellent discussion of the depressing changes in medical care over decades may be found in the thoughtful observations of a general surgeon (see that here). This is an excellent review of how governmental interventions “have yielded a cascade of perverse incentives, bureaucratic diktats, and economic pressures that together are forcing doctors to sacrifice their independent professional medical judgment, and their integrity.”

Is your doctor burned out? If so, the details above probably played a role.

 

 

Biden versus Trump: What Can We Do?

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Biden versus Trump: What Can We Do? I’ve written about this problem before (see here and here), but events continue to move in the wrong direction. Will we have the opportunity to vote for a candidate we actually prefer during our next presidential election? Doesn’t look like it. Both Biden and Trump have unfavorable ratings of 55% according to recent polls (see Biden’s here, and Trump’s here) And their approval ratings are hovering between the upper 30s to low 40s. Nevertheless, unless a miracle occurs, those two tainted individuals are headed toward an undesirable slug fest in 2024. WHAT CAN WE DO?

First, try to recall a time when two more unpalatable candidates vied for our presidency. Admittedly, there have been some colossal duds in the past, but I submit that never before have our choices been so bleak. Both Biden and Trump are imbued with scary traits. I’ll consider here just two of each candidate’s many drawbacks.

Personal attributes

Mr. Biden:

People talk about his age. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that 73% of voters think him too old to run for president. Some 60% say he isn’t mentally capable. I’m most concerned about his mental acuity, which is in shreds. Even partisan Democrats must have noticed the endless indications of the man’s dotage. One telling recent blooper occurred at a private campaign event, in which Biden told a story about why he chose to run. Minutes later he told the same story again, almost word for word, as verified by a transcript of the speech later published by the White House. Think about that. An aware person may repeat a word, but not an entire story after just telling it. In short, Mr. Biden’s mental status is dismal, and far below the level necessary to adequately perform duties of the presidency.

Mr. Trump:

Although he is just three years younger than Biden, fewer people focus on his age. His brash, vindictive personality weighs him down far more than his age. Try to recall all the former friends and associates that Trump has turned his vengeance on. It would take some doing to log all the bodies strewn in his wake. Accordingly, it seems likely that the former president, if he were to move back into the White House, would spend much of his time settling what he considers old grievances. Moreover, it was obvious that Mr. Trump did little to dignify the presidency while he occupied the White House, and it is difficult to imagine his behavior would improve if he were reelected. In short, Mr. Trump’s aggressive and vindictive personality likely would inflame the already-divisive Washington climate and thereby hinder his performance as president. 

Legal difficulties

Mr. Trump:

1) The former president is immersed in a swamp of legal problems. He faces charges that legal experts say portends a dangerous road ahead for him.

2) In Washington federal court, he is charged with conspiring to defraud the U.S. by preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory over Trump and thus depriving voters of their right to a fair election.

3) A Georgia grand jury has issued an indictment accusing him of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

4) A federal court in Miami has charged him with unlawfully keeping classified national security documents when he left office in 2021 and lying to officials who sought to recover them.

5) A New York grand jury indicted him for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with a hush-money payment (allegedly using campaign funds) to a porn star before the 2016 presidential election.

6) A New York attorney has  sued Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, in September 2022 for alleged fraud by him and his family.

Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of the above charges. Each of them, it should be noted, carries possible prison sentences. Stay tuned.

Mr. Biden:

1) House Republicans have started an impeachment inquiry of the current president, this concerning whether Mr. Biden collaborated with his son, Hunter, in enriching the son, other family members, and the president himself.

2) I don’t pretend to know fact from fiction here, but one point seems self-evident, that being that Hunter Biden has neither the knowledge nor the expertise to have earned (without help) the millions of dollars he collected from foreign sources. As has been widely reported, a sizeable amount of circumstantial evidence suggests his father, while vice president, was linked to Hunter’s earnings. I’m not alone. Some 61% of those in a recent poll (see here) believe that Mr. Biden had some level of involvement in Hunter’s business dealings — and 42% think that he acted illegally (there has been no proof of wrongdoing by the president). 

3) According to Business Insider, subpoenaed bank records reveal that the Biden family created over 20 shell companies (companies through which they reportedly received about $20 million in payments from foreign sources). Bankrate.com defines a shell company, or shell corporation as an entity that typically lacks active business operations or employees. Shell companies can have many possible uses, from serving as vehicles to raise funds to facilitating corporate mergers, but they may also be used by individuals and companies to evade taxes, launder money and hide the identities of their owners.

4) It also has been reported that a total of nine Biden family members received unexplained wire transfers from foreign businesses. Even two of Biden’s grandchildren received payments. It’s unclear which grandchildren received payments, but most of them are in their early twenties with no personal or business ties to Ukraine, Russia, or China.

5) An IRS whistle blower, Joseph Ziegler, who works in the agency’s International Tax and Financial Crime section, said in his opening statement before Congress that he was the lead IRS case agent on the investigation and that the IRS had recommended both felony and misdemeanor charges against the president’s son.  That recommendation was ignored. “I have a reason to believe that there was gross mismanagement present throughout this investigation,” Ziegler said.

6) According to Hunter Biden’s former associates, the Vice President joined Hunter in telephone conversations with the foreign representatives who provided money to Hunter.

Mr Biden denies that he was in any way connected to his son’s businesses. The investigation continues. Stay tuned.

Final thoughts

I’ll end where I began. Biden versus Trump: What can we do? Well, we can raise a fuss, and many of us can raise many fusses. If that fails, we can individually assess the multiple drawbacks of each of these sorry candidates. Once that is decided, we then can vote against the one considered to be the worst. By doing that, We the People of the United States, will form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, just as the preamble to our Constitution proclaims.

If you agree that a Biden – Trump ticket is not what our country needs, please consider forwarding this post to others, and urge them to do the same. Who knows? Perhaps we can make a difference.

 

Does a Striking Football Player let his Teammates Down?

Posted on by Ken Goetz

Does a striking football player let his teammates down? That question came up recently, and I’ve taken a crack at answering it. To come up with a reasonable answer, I’ve tried to imagine that I’m a valuable player on an outstanding professional football team, the reigning Super Bowl champion, no less, and I’ve further assumed I’m making something like a cool $20 million a year as a defensive tackle. (I almost broke my noggin with those ridiculous assumptions, but I tried to be creative.) I made one final assumption: I’m now in the last year of a 4-year contract worth $80 million, so I’ve been in the bucks for a while.

It was even more difficult for me  to assume that I’m not happy with that $20 million bundle of chicken feed. But I pretended I was unhappy. Why? Because another defensive tackle on another team, probably the best tackle in the league, is making more than I am.

Continuing my little game, I filled in more blanks. I have not reported to camp for pre-season drills. I have not shown up for any team practices, and I have not been with the team for any of its pre-season games. And I won’t be playing in the opening game against the Detroit Lions tonight, on September 7.

Now I’m trying to imagine how my teammates might feel about all of this.

As many of you realized, I was pretending to be a character in what is a real-life situation. Chris Jones of the Kansas City Chiefs is in the position I imagined I was in, and he seems to be firmly entrenched (see here). Naturally, I don’t know what motives are directing Jones’s behavior, but I’m convinced he’s off base when he talks about how his teammates, those hoping to return to the Super Bowl this season, feel about his prolonged absence.

When Jones was asked whether he might be letting his teammates down, he responded, “How have I let them down? It’s just like when you’re at your job, and you ask for an extension — you ask for a raise.”

 “Who are you letting down for asking your boss for a raise?” he continued.

Well, I’ve thought about that question. Here are a couple of things for you to consider, Mr. Jones. When asking the boss for a raise, please consider that one usually doesn’t quit working while asking for more money. Beyond that, if the person asking for a raise is involved in a vital team project, wouldn’t that person’s absence be hurting other members of his team?

To be more specific, Mr. Jones, your teammates on the Kansas Chiefs are vying for another trip to the Super Bowl, and a weakness in their defensive line could lead to the loss of one or more games that might otherwise be won if you were playing. Such unfortunate losses would reduce the Chiefs’s seasonal record and possibly prevent your teammates from reaching their goal this year.

So, Mr. Jones, please understand that your prolonged absence is indeed letting your teammates on the Kansas City Chiefs down, and, of course, letting all Chiefs fans down as well. Would you please negotiate the extension of your contract with those considerations in mind? Please consider your teammates and fans.

Addendum September 8, 2023

Some of you likely know that Chris Jones sat in a private box high above Arrowhead Stadium last night as the Kansas City Chiefs lost, 21 to 20, to the Detroit Lions. I wonder whether Mr. Jones saw any Chiefs player wave up at him during the game, as if to say, “We’re with you as you hold out for more money, Chris. You’re looking all cool and relaxed up there, Man, while we’re working our butts off.  We know you’re making more money than most of us down here are, and we sure could use your help, Brother. But no worries. We’ve got your back.”

Do you think anything close to that happened?