Posts tagged - Trump

Where Have You Gone Mr. Ross Perot?

Posted on: July 09, 2019, in: , , , , , ,

Ross Perot photo by Allan Warren Creative Commons

Ross Perot photo by Allan Warren, Creative Commons

I just heard that Ross Perot passed this morning, and wish to repost a story I wrote a while back on him as a political candidate. I voted for Mr. Perot in 1992 and he’s the last presidential candidate that I believed in. Since then I’ve mostly been voting against one candidate or another, or for “the lesser of two evils.”

We have a “reality show” government  these days with a buffoon in charge, a cast of argumentative idiots, the studio audience throwing sodas and punching one another, while the media, other governments, sore losers and vindictive winners throw firecrackers and feces to keep things hopping.

Sucked into the reality show world, one may lose track of how a government should operate. Our educational system, infrastructure, standard of living, and public trust decline, while the gap between rich and poor grows and our attention is riveted on the latest rancorous social issues — religious liberty vs. LGBT rights; free speech vs. hate speech; innocent until proven guilty vs. #metoo; facts vs. fake news; the Second Amendment vs. gun control; Republicans vs. Democrats. And so it goes in a race to the lowest common denominator, the most degraded assertions and conflicts, the stupidity that like an auto wreck, grabs attention and bottlenecks traffic but accomplishes nothing.

Politics has always been ripe for conflict, lies and mudslinging. The Founding Fathers recognized that and put multiple levels of checks and balances into the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights in a fairly successful attempt to tamp down the nastiness and irrationality that is resident in nearly everyone while catalyzing the charity and good sense that is also resident in nearly everyone.

America missed the boat in 1992 when it largely ignored Ross Perot. And before you harken back to the critics of the day who ridiculed his big ears, squeaky voice, etc., take a look at this half-hour video about the problems facing America in 1992 and Perot’s predictions on what might happen if they were not corrected.

Rather than just blame others for the problems and promising to “make everything wonderful,” he had specific measures designed to fix failing infrastructure, help improve schools, revive the economy, balance the budget and improve the quality of health care. He used charts and sounded like a schoolmaster lecturing a class of nincompoops, and was therefore a ripe target for comics, opposition politicians and vested interests. But watch the video and you will see solutions that cut both ways, that would have balanced the budget by 1998, cut the interest payments on the national debt and pumped trillions of dollars into improving the country. But he appealed for sacrifice, said it wouldn’t be easy, and we chose pork and BS instead.

Clinton, Bush and Obama were not bad presidents, but they continued to paper over the cracks, blame the opposition, ignore the debt and promise us everything if we would just vote for them. And we went for it. The looming problems Perot outlined (growing national debt, huge amounts of interest on that debt, the widening gap between rich and poor, declining educational system, declining standard of living, lousy health-care system, political polarization, deteriorating infrastructure and more) continued to grow like toadstools in the dark.

Perot laid bare the country’s political and economic dark side, but instead of a sober hearing by the media, he was widely ridiculed by detractors, excoriated as an outsider, an interloper, and barred from disrupting the smoothly choreographed political rain dance.

Conservatives are often derided as “wanting to return to the past.” But that derision ignores the fact that lessons can be learned and adjustments made based on a careful analysis of those lessons so we can move forward with creative ideas toward a postulated better world.

But can we even get there from here? Not without a look at the basic decisions and policies and vested interests that got us into this insane reality show in the first place. The Founding Fathers gave us a workable national structure, but to make it function requires grownups.

 

 

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Are You Conservative? Blame your Brain

Posted on: November 08, 2017, in: , , ,

Political psychiatry is nothing new in the world, or even in the United States. Every dictator or crackpot ruler who wishes to invalidate his opposition will claim said opposition is psychotic. Why would anyone of sound mind seek to undermine such a workers’ paradise and such a benevolent and caring Dear Leader?

The old Soviet Union slapped a “crazy” label on political dissidents and sent them away to psychiatric prisons. And in the U.S. the so-called “Siberia Bill” of 1956 would have established a million-acre psychiatric reservation in Alaska with very loose commitment procedures. And last year, Russia was locking Crimean Tatars up in psychiatric hospitals.

Last year an NPR Morning Edition segment titled “Hidden Factors in your Brain Help to Shape Beliefs on Income Inequality” cited some research studies that purport to show opinions are simply a matter of brain function. It is a rather short leap from that statement to “The people who believe X are crazy. The people who believe Y are sane.”

So according to this research, opinions are the result of brain function. The study compares “egalitarian thinking” (which is good) with “hierarchical thinking” (which is bad.) Drunks like hierarchical thinking, according to the story, and the drunker they are the more hierarchical they are. The more evolved they are, the more egalitarian (which is good, remember) and thus more sane. So people with hierarchical opinions – Republicans for example – are apelike cretins which is proved by research, remember, and only Democrats are highly evolved and caring.

So the conclusions one is left with, is that people who tolerate income inequality – where productive people can become wealthy providing useful products and services while bums who produce nothing of value stay relatively poor– are insane and have something wrong with their brains.

Now that we have established a “brain based” cause-and-effect relationship for political opinion, we can perhaps begin to “normalize” those hierarchical brains out there for their own good, give them pharmaceuticals, electroshock, the new brain implants being tested by DARPA, psychedelic drugs and other mental health “treatments.”

And of course, recently a number of psychs violated the Goldwater Rule — which prohibits shrinks from diagnosing people they’ve not personally met and obtained permission to publicize their findings — and decided in their vast wisdom that President Trump is crazy.

Putting aside the fact that the people of the United States elected him President, the head shrinkers would love to have the authority to decree this or that person crazy, as it would put them in charge — and power is something they’ve lusted for. Or perhaps they could examine candidates for office and say: “let this one run” and “institutionalize that one.”

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Drugs Approved Faster, Expect More Safety Issues

Posted on: October 08, 2017, in: , , ,

Since FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has taken over, drug approvals have accelerated according to Bloomberg News, with 34 news drugs approved so far — double last year’s rate. Gottlieb, appointed by President Trump, has a long history of working for and with the pharmaceutical industry so the pro-industry fast tracking was to be expected. Trump has also pledged to “slash restraints” on new drug development.

Now the only conundrum for investors is whether stocks will rise because of so many new drugs coming on the market, or fall because of increased competition that could lower prices.

Regardless, the net result will be more drugs flooding into the country with less scrutiny, and less testing. Nearly one-third of FDA-approved drugs already had to be revisited after safety-related “incidents.” Psych drugs and those on accelerated approval fared even worse. In addition, 90% of new drugs coming onto the market are no more effective than the old drugs they are to replace. But the race to get a piece of the $1 trillion (with a “t) per year pharmaceutical pie is irresistible.

 

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Shrinks, Witch Finders, Gourd Rattlers and Snake Oil Salesmen Decide Who is Fit to be President

Posted on: October 02, 2017, in: , , , , , ,

Well, the psychs are at it again. A bunch of shrinks — who get together at conventions, have a few drinks, listen to a pharmaceutical marketing expert and then vote on what’s crazy and what isn’t — have diagnosed the President of the United States as nuts in a new book. And a few thin-skinned media pundits who have been verbally taken to task for slanted or anti-Trump reporting have joined the “Trump is nuts” crowd.

Perhaps what tipped the scale was when Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier quit the President’s Manufacturing Council after the President’s condemnation of the Charlottesville tragedy was slow in coming. In a notable swipe at big pharma, Trump tweeted: “Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President’s Manufacturing Council, he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!” That must have sent a shiver of alarm through the $1 trillion global pharmaceutical markets.

The “Trump is nuts” movement is just the latest episode of a long history of psychs of various stripes lusting for the authority to decide who should be in charge, and who is “defective” and should be marginalized or institutionalized. There are crazy people, of course, but psychiatrists have no idea how to diagnose them and have yet to cure anybody. Instead, they prescribe drugs that amp up “homicidal ideation,” increase the risk of death by 33%, and which are no more effective at curing anybody than sugar pills. Nevertheless, they issue their pronunciamentos as if they knew what they were doing.

What they are doing is wedging their way into key decision-making posts, becoming gatekeepers at choke points to a better life. In education, for example, psychologists developed standardized tests to put a stamp of scientific legitimacy on racism and discrimination.

Psychs want the authority to decide who is admitted to university and who is rejected, who gains a scholarship and who should stay home, who is hired and who is unemployed. In the past, intelligence tests were used to exclude racial groups from immigration, higher education and employment. Those judged feebleminded were often sterilized.

Psychiatry has also been used to discredit individuals who rebel or are critical of leaders. Whistleblowers are prime targets. Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, for example, were labeled “narcissistic” over and over again, painting them with a personality disorder.

And after all, who in their right mind would disagree with some “Dear Leader” but the insane? The Soviets, Chinese, North Koreans, and others put political dissidents into mental institutions where they may be locked up , drugged, electroshocked and removed from the normal course of legal protection.

In 1964, the American Psychiatric Association polled members to see if Barry Goldwater was fit to become president. They showed their hand a bit early on that one, and the “Goldwater Rule” was thereby enacted which states that psychiatrists may not comment on the mental health of a public figure they have not personally examined and been granted permission to disclose the findings.

Last year, an NPR Morning Edition segment titled “Hidden Factors in your Brain Help to Shape Beliefs on Income Inequality” was a bit more subtle. It cited a research study that supposedly shows that political opinions are actually a matter of brain function, and — by implication — people who tolerate income inequality have a mental defect.

Nevertheless, in the era of President Donald Trump, a few psychs have decided to break their own code of ethics and pronounced Trump afflicted with “grandiosity” and “narcissism,” among others.

Head shrinkers and snake-oil salesmen may not override the decision of the American people as to who is qualified to be president, and any attempts to do so should be seen in context as an attack on the credibility of the presidency and a forwarding of the psych agenda. Like the high priests and witch finders of old they deal in suspicion and accusation and would increase their control and their power at the expense of the Constitution. The latest move is a bill by Rep. Ted Lieu to require a White House Psychiatrist who would evidently have some authority if a President did or said unusual things.

Any position as powerful as President of the United States is always a target of detractors, people with an axe to grind, as well as outright enemies. In the Constitution are enshrined mechanisms whereby Congress can impeach and remove a President from office for cause. That standard has not been reached, and no group of witch finders, gourd rattlers and snake oil salesmen need be consulted.

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