THE DAILY IMPACT

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Our public conversation these days is thick with heated references to Rights — rights denied, rights claimed, rights deserved. We have a Constitutional right, it is proclaimed, to ignore public health restrictions and refuse vaccinations; we have an unlimited right to possess guns; we have a right to health care and a living wage (the latter two being described as human, not Constitutional, rights). We really need to talk about this. 

One way to begin is with our Declaration of Independence, which declares life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be “inalienable” rights. And then of course there’s our Constitution, whose Bill of Rights conveys ten additional “rights,” such as freedom of speech, assembly, worship, etc. Continue reading →

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We plan to be back in our apartment by next weekend, as soon as the decorators are finished.

The low-information, low-IQ ICPs (Intellectually Challenged Persons — I have been told I should come up with a more graceful way of referring to them than “idiots,” which is my preference) who are taking to the streets demanding that someone somewhere throw a switch and start the economy running like it used to, have not looked over their shoulders. The economy they walked out of just a few weeks ago isn’t there any more.

With nearly half of all American workers in serious trouble the first week of May — having severe difficulty paying rent, mortgages, credit-card and other debt, auto loans, health care and even food — the pain is only beginning. With the unemployment insurance systems overwhelmed, the first wave of a tsunami of state and local government layoffs is just now beginning.  Continue reading →

Joe Biden and his fellow Republicrats have vowed to protect us from Bernie Sanders and his threats to take away our beloved health insurance policies, forgetting to mention that what Sanders actually proposes is replacing them with a far superior and cheaper policy. The people who don’t support Medicare for All seem to be members of two groups: healthy people who believe that they will never get sick, and comfortably employed people whose employer takes care of the hassle of providing them with health insurance, and who seem to believe they will never lose or change jobs.

Now comes Mr. Coronavirus to demonstrate two truths: you might well get sick when you least expect it; and you might lose your job when you least expect it; and both those things could happen at the same time. About half of all Americans depend on employer-sponsored health insurance. Last week — last week — 3.3 million people filed for unemployment insurance. An historic number of people, more than ever recorded in a single week, lost their jobs, their income and their health insurance in the middle of a deadly pandemic. That was just the first bad week, with many worse weeks to come.

Even if you still have your health insurance, getting the coronavirus could break you. Not to worry, says the Tweeter in Chief, the for-profit insurance companies have generously agreed to waive co-payments for coronavirus testing and treatment. How splendid of them, that’s a big hit to take for the team. Except they didn’t. As their trade organization said almost immediately after the president’s grand announcement, “Like hell!” (I’m paraphrasing, but the sentiment was clear.) They were prepared to give people a break on the testing, but not the treatment. That would have involved real money.

So rest assured, besieged Americans, that while your business is closed, your income is gone, your children are marooned at home, your rent and car payment are coming due, even with all this there are plenty of American companies gorging themselves on profits derived from your misfortune. Thank God we don’t live in a socialist country.