R.P. Barr

Wounded on the Job

Among other things, I follow news of workplace injuries.  Lately, there have been some new cases that present some new trends. 

 There was the woman who telecommuted from home.  Her workplace was an office in the garage.  One day, on her way from the house to the garage, she tripped over her dog.  I forget the injury, but it was apparently worth going to court over. The employer said—in other words—“Oh, come on.  This was her dog in her house, how can we be responsible?”  The court disagreed.  The employer knew that she had her office in the garage, and walking from home to garage involved all the risks therin. 

In another case, a woman working from home had a fatal heart attack.  The court ruled that AT&T, the employer, knew that she was working beyond her normal hours, and that too many hours at a sedentary job is a heart attack risk.  The woman’s obesity was not relevant.

 The lesson of these two cases—and of others sure to come—is that employers are responsible for remote workplaces.  They may need to visit the homes of telecommuters to ensure a safe workplace, and to monitor employee activity to see that they get up and walk around periodically.  Or else, get out of the telecommuting business altogether.  Or—and I think this is most probable—businesses will seek legislation indemnifying them against employees who are injured at home.

Another pair of cases are so similar, I don’t have to tell the separate stories.  Employers hired undocumented immigrants.  Of course they claimed that they did the due diligence and the employees appeared legal.  The employer did not provide safety equipment or training.  When the workers were disabled or killed on the job, the employer said, “I don’t have to pay because they were illegal.”  The court said—and I completely agree—the legal status of the workers is a separate issue, and irrelevant to the OSHA violations and Worker's Comp responsibility.  To decide differently would be to reward the employer for hiring undocumented workers.

 The moral, as I see it, is that there will always be employers who will look for cheaper operating costs without taking responsibility for the consequences, whether its saving office space by letting people work from home, or by hiring people who won’t question the work rules.   Cutting government oversight will make us no better than Chinese or Indian employers.

 

Please Terminate Abortion

Understanding why President Obama threw the D.C. budget under the bus does not make it right.  He had to give the Republicans some meat in order to prevent a government shutdown and D.C. was better than the whole country.

That’s what happens when you have no representation in the body that decides how you spend your money. 

 There were three major provisions:  School vouchers don’t bother me, but using them or not is a local issue, not a matter for Congress. 

 Stopping the clean needle exchang program, however, is stupid, fiscally irresponsible, and morally reprehensible.  The program works.  It slows the spread of HIV/AIDS.  That not only keeps junkies alive—not that I care about them—but it helps prevent HIV from contaminating our blood supply and spreading into the wider community.  This is an epidemic, people.  You are either against AIDS, or you are for it.  The Republicans are evidently for it.  Plus, when the victims wind up in the hospital, guess who pays for their long and expensive treatment?  We do.

And then there are abortions—again. 

 Let me begin by saying that I am opposed to abortion on moral grounds.  There is no point at which life begins.  It began millions of years ago and it continues passing from one generation to another through the union of a live sperm and a live egg.  It does not rise from anything dead or inert.

 If this were a perfect world of two billion well-fed people, I would fight for that principle.  That ain’t the case.  Of course, if Congressman Ryan gets control of health care, we will move in that direction.

 I am in favor of birth control.  The reason is that sex does not always result in pregnancy.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of eggs die for every one that is fertilized.  Millions, if not billions, of sperm also die for want of a safe harbor.  Blocking a few more is hardly going to make a difference.

 I believe that women should have control over their bodies, and, tragedy aside, I have no problem with a carefully considered suicide.  Abortion, however, means killing someone else.

 That is where the hypocrisy comes in.  Abortion is legally not the same thing as murder.  The pro-lifers don’t advocate life in prison for women who have abortions.  The person who hires a killer is as guilty as the one who pulls the trigger.  Those who assist in the crime are accomplices.  There is no proposed legislation to prosecute doctors, nurses, pharmacists, nurses aids, the women who hire them, the parent/friend/lover who provides money or transportation or who had prior knowledge, etc.

 Under the law, a fetus is not quite a true human being, because killing him/her is not quite murder.

 Let’s set punishment aside.  Most abortions are for economic reasons.  A very few are due to rape or incest. A few more are for the health of the mother.  The rest are because the woman—single or married—is not in a position to care for a child (or another one).

 If my daughter had become pregnant as a teenager, I would have raised the baby to free her to go to college and start a career.  There would also have been a rather stern admonition to not do it again. What about the girl without that kind of support?  The best way to prevent abortions is to provide pre- and post-natal health care, a dozen or so years of day care, health care, education, and whatever else it takes. Guarantee the newly pregnant woman a future as bright with a child as without, and the rate of abortions will drop way down.

 The pro-life crowd won’t do that because they think it would encourage young women to have babies for the money, and, they certainly don’t want to encourage new life.  Especially if it costs them anything.  Babies are God's way of punishing promiscuity.  And, that is how you spell hypocrisy.

 A couple days ago, Lashanda Armstrong, 25, who had had babies instead of abortions, drove her minivan into the Hudson River, deliberately drowning herself and three of her four children.  Ten-year-old  Lashaun, the eldest, rolled down a window just in time and swam to safety.  Ms Armstrong, according to her neighbors, had been a good mother, but she had reached the end of her rope.  Being a single mother was just too damn hard in this economy.  She felt there was nowhere to turn.

 When the Republicans and Tea Partiers and Conservative Christians begin to take care of the Lashanda Armstrongs of this country, then I will join them on the pro-life picket line.  Until then, please, shut up.

 

Selling our humanity

The current administration running the state of Virginia is trying to save money.  This is not only not a bad thing, it is a neccesity in these cash-strapped times. 

The governor wanted to sell off the monopoly that the state has in retail liquor sales.  Only state owned stores are allowed to sell booze.  This raises a lot of revenue.  It also raises the envy of private companies that are being shut out.  Selling the stores would raise some short term revenue, but would cost the state much more over ensuing years.  The governor has backed off that one for now.

 The Richmond gang is also reducing the size of the training centers for the intellectually disabled (ID).  One of the governor’s men said that the goal was to reduce the size until they were no longer economically viable, and then shut them altogether. Again, the state sees savings and private interests see profits.  The lobbyists for the elimination of state facilities say that government institutions are inherently bad and small, intimate group homes are always better.  But, it ain’t necessarily so.

There was a time when mental illness, and even epilepsy, were not acceptible in American society.  ID children, the ones with autism, Down’s syndrome, etc. were sent away and shut up in warehouses where they were not treated as well as livestock on farms.  Of course, that was before factory farms—but I digress.  There were a series of scandals.  Under intense pressure and scrutiny, state institutions improved greatly over the past few decades.  Some states got out of the business altogether.

As networks of privately run group houses grew, the natural antipathy toward state-run institutions became a well-financed movement.  And, in the Old Dominion state, it is in high gear.  Reporters are introduced to high-functioning individuals who talk about their jobs, and how they can go to the store by themselves, etc.  It sounds good.  Only an evil bureaucracy would want such endearing people shut away.

 They don’t show the less gifted ID individuals.  Many people with mental problems were also born with severe physical handicaps.  Some cannot speak, but only make vocal noises.  Many cannot walk or even sit up straight.  They have to be moved frequently to prevent bed sores.  I knew a young man whose face was perpetually stretched as if in surprise.  He could not close his mouth and had to have it sprayed with water to prevent it from drying out.  Folks at this end of the spectrum need attentive care around the clock.

 There are some “normal” people who wonder why we should spend anything on such unproductive, vegetative beings.  They haven’t met them.  These are people with a sense of self and an awareness of their surroundings.  And, unlike some Wall Street bankers, ID individuals do no harm.  Quite the contrary, they teach the rest of us lessons in humanity.

 State institutions have layer upon layer of oversight: local, federal, state and community. All records not restricted by privacy laws are open to inspection.  Because of the numbers in these facilities, they attract scrutiny.  Blemishes are blown up into scandals--and rightly so.  All it takes for evil to re-emerge is for people to look the other way.

 Community houses don’t have medical and psychiatric support in house.  They don’t have campuses where individuals can roam in safety.  If they lock an individual in his room, no-one knows.  If staff mistreats or steals they do so in relative secrecy.  Is this sort of misbehavior rampant?  Probably not. But, how would we know if it were?

 As for the savings, community houses have always taken those who were most capable and required the least maintenance, while state facilities took those who needed the most looking after.  It’s like the taxi companies saying that they are more economical than the bus companies because their vehicles get better mileage.

 Since those with disabilities cover a vast range of needs, I want to see choices.  Every one of them should be able to maximize the possiblities of life.  I would also like to see comparison studies.  Start with a simple mortality study.  Where do people with similar conditions live longer?  In state facilities or in private ones? Once the publicly run centers are gone, they won't be coming back.  Shouldn't there be some hard data to prove that change?

It would be nice to see at least one policy decided on science instead of by lobbyist donations.

 

An ounce of prevention is not enough to warrant consideration

I don't like using the names of murderers because many of them are motivated by a desire for attention, so we will just call him "the Tucson killer."  

A shooting like this gets people excited.  Why they wait for blood on the ground before getting excited is one of the weaknesses of democracy.  Some have called for more gun control.  Personally, I would like to see the gun show loophole closed.  All gun purchases should involve a background check--not just the ones in gun stores.  Beyond that--  Well, I don't think that anyone who buys 10 or a hundred guns at a time is doing holiday shopping.  There should be limits--perhaps including follow up visits to see if the guns are still in the possession of the buyer a month or a year later.

Meanwhile, I recommend the following blog about the pro-gun vs anti-gun cultures.  http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/01/the_anti-gun_culture_irrespons.php#more

In this particular case, I would like to learn more about the Tucson killer himself.  Some of his former associates, like his former girl friend, have said that he was quiet, but otherwise normal until 6 years ago.  Then, he began acting out in bizarre ways.  That leads me to believe that his problem is more physical than psychological.  I haven't read that he was into heavy drug use, so what does that leave?  A brain tumor?  Has anyone done a brain scan in the past year or so?  There is not even any mention of psychological counseling.  He wouldn't have sought it out because he thought everyone else was at fault.  Still,  I suspect that there is something wrong with this young man that could have been fixed if anybody had looked for it.  But, of course, forcing him into treatment would have been a violation of his rights.  And, when discussing human rights, the potential for mass murder is not to be considered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/01/the_anti-gun_culture_irrespons.php#more

Unintended Consequences

It’s funny how the internet works.  I was looking at Pravda.ru for more about something I heard on RT (Russian Television).  And, there I found a story that originated in my own back yard.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

 The news on RT the other day featured a man named William Engdahl who said, “The whole attack on Greece and the attack on the Euro originated from a concerted strategy of Wall Street and US Institutions to permanently cripple or try to cripple the only alternative reserve currency anywhere in the world that can challenge the dollar.”

Could there be any truth in that?  Maybe, if the process had decimated the U.S. economy as well.  Or was that part of the scheme so that stocks would fall and could be bought up for a song? 

Whatever.  It shows how loosening the rules on banking that allowed all sorts of hedging and risk insuring eventually—inevitably—made the bankers believe that making loans was risk free.  That belief inflated a bubble that imploded and ruined the world’s economy.  Not only that, there is now a growing belief that all those smart thinkers on Wall Street could not have taken the many steps they did—lobbied for new laws and everything--without knowing the outcome.  And, if they knew the outcome, there had to be a purpose in it all:  wrecking the Euro.  Conspiracy therorists unite.

 But, I didn’t find anything more about Engdahl and his theory at the Pravda site.  What I found was potentially more alarming.

 If you are old enough, you have a circular scar the size of dime on your upper arm like I do.  We were all vaccinated against smallpox once upon a time with a little bundles of needles.  Wikipedia says that as late as 1967, 15 million people worldwide contracted smallpox and 2 million died.  Then, the World Health Organization led an effort to do something remarkable.  For the first time in human history, a disease was totally eradicated.  It wasn’t easy.  Every person on Earth had to be vaccinated.  Health care workers went door-to-door in the cities, and walked dirt paths to remote shacks.  And, by December 9, 1979, virtually everyone was inoculated.  That is the date that WHO certified the planet to be free of smallpox.

 This week, researchers at George Mason University, Prince William Campus in Manassas, announced that the victory over smallpox may not have been as total as we thought.  The smallpox is still gone.  Nobody needs the vaccine anymore.  A couple generations are free of those little, round scars.  But, early research indicates that the vaccine may also have protected us against HIV.  Oops.

Not the only “oops” in the news.

 The oil companies figured out how to drill for oil thousands of feet under the ocean.  They developed shut-off valves to prevent spills.  Apparently, they did not figure out how to repair malfunctioning shut-off valves.

 A North Korean submarine fired a torpedo into the Cheonan, a South Korean naval vessel.  Was this action ordered by the North Korean government, or was it due to misunderstood orders?  Not likely it was an accident, but those things can happen, too.  It doesn’t matter.  Pyongyang has been unnecessarily belligerent, and now 46 sailors are dead.  South Korea and the U.S. are going to have to reply.  And, Kim Jong Il has promised a retaliation if he doesn’t like the South’s reaction.   Kim watches U.S. television, but apparently he missed the Sesame Street episode when they discussed the concept of what-happens-next.

 Meanwhile, the world is watching to see what happens next in Arizona, and looking for the unintended consequenses that are certain to follow their recent legislation. 

It all helps me understand the frustration of voters in the recent elections.  The world is going crazy and nothing seems to help.  Or, maybe, with the internet and multimedia communications, we’re just more aware of all the craziness that has always been there.  We should remember that elections have unintended consequences, too.

Auditing the Drug Laws

As if we needed more proof of the decline of American journalism, AP presented an article this week entitled, “AP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals” by Martha Mendoza in Mexico City. [http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100514/ap_on_re_us/failed_drug_war_6#mwpphu-container] I can only hope that Ms Mendoza wrote it to please someone in blood-soaked Mexico. 

 The article itself lacks focus and lumps the cost of treating drug users in with the cost of enforcing drug laws as if legalization would eliminate the need for medical treatment by drug abusers.

 There is also the weird implication that criminal laws should have some sort of sunset provision.  If enforcement has not achieved total compliance within a given time frame, then the law should be scrapped as unworkable.  Have the laws against murder, rape, and drunk driving eliminated those practices?  No, then lets make them all legal and end this wasteful business with courts and prisons.

If tobacco and alcohol were developed today, they would be illegal because of the harm they do.  However, because those evil substances are ingrained into  society, they cannot be banned.  (No one is taking away my beer!) 

Marijuana is arguably on a par with tobacco and alcohol as far as what it does to the body.  Some see that as an argument for legalization, I see it as an argument against.  Some point to the Dutch experiment.  They haven’t looked closely enough.  The pot cafes are centers for illegal activity, selling hard drugs under the counter, for instance.  California’s legalization of  medical marijuana has also seen abuses from day one.

 Laws are not written in order to put people in jail.  They are written to regulate society and keep harmful activities to a manageable minimum.  There is always a cost.  My legal glass of wine at dinner is at the expense of alcoholics who have ruined their lives.  Is my relaxation worth the thousands who die in drunk driving accidents every year?  Is another man’s incarceration worth the lives that are preserved?  Do we need another class of intoxicants?

It's true the drug laws are not efficiently administered.  Treatment programs have never been adequate.  However, like child molestation by priests, poor official response does not mean that the rule should be abolished.  We just have to do a better job.

Non-Governmental Taxes

Some people are crying about taxes and the fear of new programs.  I would just like a word about the taxes we pay to corporations.  In 2001, I paid about $86.00 per month for my family-plan health insurance.  That was my share.  My employer, the government, paid a larger part.  Today, for the same coverage with the same provider, I am paying $323.00 and change.  My share.  Deducted from my retirement.  I’m pretty healthy overall, so most of what I pay goes to cover the illnesses of other people who have the same insurance carrier—and for the HMO’s administration and profit.  The medical care that I do receive is not between my doctor and myself.  I have asked for tests for ailments and been told that the diagnostic tests are not covered while the doctors try one prescription after another to see what works.  Good thing that my condition is not serious.  But, how would I know?

 I pay another thousand or more for life insurance.  If I live past age 70, the policies will only pay half.  Or less.  So, am I buying a future benefit or paying a tax?  True, I could cancel the policies and pocket the money.  Then my wife would have to sell the house when I die, and live where? 

 When I was a kid, my father paid monthly gas, electric, water and telephone bills.  I pay those—actually, I pay three phone bills to include my cell phones and internet connection.  Then, I pay for television connection and garbage collection.  Ah, those are fees for services, you say.  Except when I am out of town and don’t use the phone, watch TV, or throw out garbage.  I still have to pay.  How is that not a tax?

The fact is that most of these private taxes have gone up faster than inflation, and faster than government taxes.  And, these companies can change their terms whenever they like.  I can accept the new terms or lose the service—such as it is.  None of the people who set these rates are answerable to me.  I can’t campaign or vote to replace them with a CEO that I like better.

I favor a public option for health care.  If it puts the private insurance companies out of business, good.  That’s not my goal, but I won’t mind if it happens.  Get rid of fee-for-service and pay doctors a salary.  A good salary, but a salary with bonuses and increases based on patient outcomes.  Take the profit incentive from between the patient and his caregiver.  Costs will go down.  Outcomes will improve.  

Breeding will tell

As a former South Carolinian, I have to say a word about Joe Wilson.  There is a favorite down home saying that sums up my attitude.  “A man can burn down your house, rape your sister and run over your dog, and you may have to shoot him, but there’s no call to be rude.”  Rudeness is the ultimate social offense, and proof of poor breeding.  A little generalized booing has a long tradition in Congress, and criticism of a speaker in a press conference later is almost a requirement for the opposition.  But, shouting rude comments is not acceptable.  The United States Congress is not the British Parliament.  If we are not going to adopt the humanity of the British medical care system, we should not emulate the catcalls and partisan insults of the their legislature. 

 As for what Wilson thought was a lie, the Republicans had offered two amendments to one or another health care bill that said public health care benefits would only be provided to those who could prove their legal status.  Both were defeated.  Their position sounds reasonable, unless you’re in the emergency room with chest pains, or a bleeding wound.  Look in your wallet or purse—can you prove that you are a legal resident of the United States?  If you’re lucky, you have insurance and your status won’t be an issue.  If you lose your insurance, however, what have you got?  A driver’s license?  That’s not proof.  Neither is a Social Security card.  Do you have a passport?  Most Americans don’t, and those who do, don’t carry them everywhere within the U.S.

 Okay, you’re in the emergency room with no acceptable proof of legal residency.  Just sit in the corner and keep pressure on that wound while an admitting clerk takes your fingerprints and waits for them to be verified.  And, if your prints are not on file somewhere?  There’s a drug store on the corner.  Good luck.

 Wait a minute, you look and sound American.  That should be enough.  Well, are we going to say that people who look Mexican have to prove residency while those who look Canadian do not?  There were Spanish-speaking people in this country before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.  And, there are U.S.-born citizens of many ethnicities for whom English is not a first language.  And what about foreign visitors whose passports are back at the hotel?

 Maybe, the proposals had a universal health card in mind, and legal status had to be proven to obtain that.  I think that is what Obama meant when he said that public health care benefits would not be provided to illegal residents.  No health card.

What does a hospital do when someone without a health care card shows up at the emergency room with a bleeding stump where his arm used to be?  He says that he left the card at home.  Does the hospital send him home for it?  Of course not.  The wound is treated.  The arm is reattached, if possible.  If the patient turns out to be an illegal and cannot pay, then the hospital passes along the cost to everyone with insurance.

So, with or without contributions from illegal residents, we are going to pay for their medical care, just like we do now for all the uninsured patients who go to the emergency room because they cannot afford a family doctor.

 However, whether we pay for the treatment of undocumented aliens or not, the difference in overall health care costs will be negligible.  It is much more important that we address runaway health care inflation.

 And, if you’ve read this far and disagree with me, feel free to tell me, and I will read your views.  We may not change each other’s minds, but we can disagree respectfully. It shows that we’re well bred. 

Take a Deep Breath--While You Can

Last week I watched the documentary, “Six Degrees Could Change the World.”  It was a fascinating view of global warming and where we are headed.  Of course, the narrator kept saying that we could head it off or slow the onset, but let’s be real.  Politicians are not going to spend the money and impose the restrictions that would have any serious effect.  The blame is not so much on the politicians as it is on the people who want services, benefits, and protection but don’t want to pay for them.

If you haven’t seen this documentary, it takes the prospect of global warming one degree at a time, showing what the effects of one degree of warming would be, what two would be, etc.  At three degrees, I heard a sentence that caught my attention.  I was a little miffed that the film proceded without elaboration.

Before I drop this bombshell on you, let me back up a bit. 

 Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the polar ice caps are shrinking, glaciers are melting and rivers that depend on melting snow and glaciers are drying up.  Orchards in the Pacific Northwest are going high tech.  They no longer have enough water for typical irrigation.  Those who can are putting sensors in the ground to measure how much moisture is available for the roots and signalling the system to release only enough water to fill the precise need. 

 Meanwhile, melting ice is darker than ice that is not melting.  The darker color attracts and holds more heat, thus accelerating the meltage.  That is why things are happening faster than were predicted a decade ago.  Are you with me so far?

 Good.  Now let’s go to the Amazon.  No ice there.  However, as Six Degrees showed, in 2005 there was a drought.  In the natural way of things, fire followed the drought and about 1,000 square miles of forest was destroyed.  Some tributaries to the Amazon dried up completely, something that has not occurred before in known history.  Fifty percent of the rain for the rainforest is generated by the trees.  When trees burn, it takes time for them to regenerate.  That means there is less moisture to produce rain, and a greater chance of drought, which leads to fire…  It is a self-accelerating cycle.  At the moment, the Amazon is still large enough to take these hits and come back, but at some point in the process of deforestation it will reach a tipping point and then it is all downhill, faster and faster.  The expert interviewed for Six Degrees said that he sees the forest reaching this point in the next twenty years (that’s 2029, if you’re counting).

 At that point, when the narrator was lamenting the loss of biodiversity and saying the loss of the Amazon rain forest could bring about another degree of warming, he said something that I had heard before, but meant more in this context: the Amazon rain forest produces 20% of the world’s oxygen.  Since the air we breathe is no respector of national borders, what happens in Brazil absolutely will affect us.

Bear in mind that as the Amazon goes, so, to greater or lesser degree, do the forests and grasslands that produce the other 80% of our oxygen, so we needn’t wait for 2029 to lose 20%.

 Can you get along with 20% less oxygen?

 I tried to look it up.  I may have missed it, but I don’t think there’s anything out there specific to the long term reduction of oxygen.  The condition of being oxygen deprived is anoxia or hypoxia (apparently the terms are interchangeable).  Human beings can function normally with up to 5% less oxygen, but all of the medical (and Wikipedia) data I found dealt with temporary, short term deprivation.  When there is not enough oxygen for normal cell activity, the body makes do with hydrogen which causes an accumulation of lactic acid.  I am neither a doctor or bio-scientist, but apparently that is not a good thing, especially over time.

 As the oxygen levels continue to decrease, we can expect headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, a feeling of euphoria and nausea.  (Personally, I have never felt euphoria and nausea at the same time, and am looking forward to that.  Headaches, fatigue and shortness of breath, I’ve got already.)  Once we get to 10% and greater loss of oxygen we can expect to see a “very rapid onset,” of changes in levels of consciousness, seizures, coma, priapism, and death. 

 I had to look up “priapism,” too.  According to Merriam Webster, it is “an abnormal often painful persistent erection of the penis.”  I guess that it will be like the little plastic pegs in turkeys that pop up when the bird is done.

 If you know of anyone with real credentials who has studied this scenario, please let me know. 

 Otherwise, it doesn’t look like we have to worry about the national debt that we will be passing on to our grandchildren.

American Values

This past week, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health issued a press release about their recent survey of health care workers [http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2009/barnett_survey.html]. 

 The headline was that in the event of a pandemic, one in six health care workers would refuse to come to work.  That was the good news.   A 2005 study reported that fully 40% of health care workers would refuse to come to work during a pandemic.  So, we're improving.

The really interesting part came much farther down in the article:  “According to the survey, public health workers who were both 'concerned' about the threat posed by a pandemic, and who were 'confident' that they could fulfill their response roles and that their roles would have a meaningful impact on the situation, were 31 times more likely to respond to work in an emergency than those who perceived the threat low and had low levels of confidence.”

 Note that perception of a low threat level was not enough to pursuade these folks to come to work   The mere risk of contagion would be enough to keep them at home.  But, to be in the most-likely-to-be-truant group, the workers had to see their jobs as not meaningful.

 Where do they get that idea?  Health care is more than doctors and nurses.  Someone has to draw the blood for tests.  Someone has to perform the lab tests.  Someone has to wash and transport the patients.  Someone has to maintain the equipment.  Someone has to take the x-rays.  Someone has to feed hospital patients.  And most important, someone has to mop, scrub and keep the whole place sterile.  The greatest cause of patient death in hospitals is hospital acquired infection. The best surgeons in the world can be undone by sloppy floor mopping.  Everyone is important.

 My own work in medical facilities taught me that some—not all—doctors really look down on all of the other workers, and denigrate their contributions to patient outcomes.  Those who take doctor abuse to heart will be less likely to show up when they are needed the most.

Don't misunderstand and think that I am writing about doctors and medicine and pandemics.  I am writing about workers.  

What makes the United States great (or did) is not that a few people get to be billionaires.  Every totalitarian regime on the planet has wealthy people.  Neither is this country great because we have natural wonders.  Those things are scattered all over.  Our monuments and landmark buildings don’t do it either.  From the time of the pilgrims, ordinary people have been able to make a decent living and achieve respect for doing so.  That is why people still immigrate here.  That is why after more than a century of slavery, the newly freed men and women did not emigrate to other shores.  Those who moved at all, moved within the United States.  However difficult, the opportunity for a better life was here.

 Now we hear those who wave the biggest flags and shout the most about freedom oppose a higher minimum wage.  They oppose insuring workers and their families against the catastrophic expense of illness. It’s okay that 14,000 people a day lose health insurance, which translates to a loss of children, husbands, wives, etc.  And a loss of homes as those without insurance struggle to pay medical bills. The über-patriots also oppose labor unions’ ability to offset the abuses of management. 

 During the American Revolution, fewer than two-thirds of the colonists supported the rebellion.  There have, ever since, been those who seek to return to an authoritarian society with privileges for a few, redistributing the wealth of labor upwards to those who do not labor.  The assertion that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights has never been fully accepted.  Look around at those today who shout against social progress, the new tories.

 The great American experiment of empowering the masses and trusting the judgement of the majority has been under assault for the last few decades.  And now, with the results of tory influence planting foreclosure signs in every neighborhood, destroying jobs, and downgrading the American dream, it is time to point out that the United States is not about flags, it is about people.

And, people who are valued will show up when they’re needed.