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The New York Times Comments and Censorship

It is a good thing that large newspapers have found a way to keep in business in the digital landscape. For a time, in the world of journalism,  it looked like even the big players were not going to make it.  I subscribe to the local paper and the N.Y. Times. From time to time I will post comments to various N.Y. Times pieces and enjoy reading the contributions and ideas from the many mysterious contributors – Socrates, CynicalObserver, God on wheels, Great Family and Friends Dish. Pretty much all of my comments are approved and people recommend them and life goes on. About a week ago I wrote a comment about how a certain article seemed to just brush the surface of the topic.

What Happens to Some L.G.B.T.Q. Teens When Their Parents Reject Them

My comment was approved and garnered a fair amount of recommendations and then was taken down. When I asked the N.Y. Times about why it was taken down, I got this for an answer: “While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective.” I find it odd that they censored this comment as it is not off-topic and abusive only if you think the truth is intolerable. What I was simply saying is that this topic is complicated  – “a complicated story with many players needing more than 3000 words.”

But in the end the N.Y. Times has every right to not publish my comments. It is a private company and can do what they want, just as Jack Dorsey should have kicked Donald Trump off of Twitter years ago for violating their terms. However, I feel that my comment below is certainly not off-topic, not abusive and perhaps even insightful. For posterity, the comment that was taken down and the N.Y. Times response is below.

What do you think? Did I cross the line?

Paul

 
Wed, Nov 11, 8:33 AM
 
Your comment has been approved!
 
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with The New York Times community.
 
Gustav | San Francisco
I think it is important to look at the rapidly changing landscape of identity among young people with a more nuanced eye. A big change in the last five years is that the medical community has become very aggressive in intervening in the bodies of youth who declare that they are transgender. Hormones and surgery are used as early interventions and “treatments.” A story not told on the NYT is how the rise of social media and the ubiquitous smart phone has stressed out many kids. Today identity is everything and many have gotten lost in transgender echo-chambers. The ignorant medical community just gets out the needles and scalpels – a complicated story with many players needing more than 3000 words.

And the N.Y. Times response to why they removed my comment.

Michelle (The New York Times Customer Care)

Nov 20, 2020, 8:00 PM EST

Hello Paul,

Thank you for contacting us here at the Customer Care Center here at The New York Times. Let me first personally thank you for your ongoing support and readership of The New York Times. I appreciate your loyalty.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Our Community desk will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

If you have any questions or require any other assistance, please feel free to reply to this email. You can also call us at 800-698-4637, or chat with us.

Thank you again for contacting The New York Times. Enjoy your day and be safe!

Michelle G,
Customer Care
The New York Times

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Op-ed: U.S. Supreme Court and Bostock vs. Clayton County

In a 6-3 decision, the court said the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars employers with 15 employees or more from discriminating on the basis of sex, requires them to treat male and female employees equally regardless of their sexuality or biological gender at birth — regardless of whether they are gay or lesbian, straight or transgender.
SF Chronicle – U.S. Supreme Court rules job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is illegal – June 15, 2020

It is a good thing that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is illegal ( Bostock vs. Clayton County). To condone discrimination based on who people love and are attracted to  and people who are on hormones to self-authenticate their gender is simply unethical.   Prescribing hormones to people to self-authenticate has its own set of ethical questions, but that is another topic all together. What is lost on many journalists and commentators who think this is simply a big win for people who are homosexual or identify as transgender is that they miss a key aspect of the ruling. What the ruling does is simply reaffirm the 1964 Civil Rights Act which bars employers with 15 employees or more from discriminating on the basis of sex

Gorsuch wrote. “That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”

What this means, and what the court is saying is that sex is real. In our current world of polarized political rhetoric, identity politics and solipsism this may seem like a minor point, but in reality it is significant. Bostock vs. Clayton County may be framed as a win for LGBT rights but it far more subtle. Gorsuch frames the issue with “it does not matter whether you are gay or identify as transgender you are first, fundamentally a human – female or male.” Surprisingly, he is looking at the issue from a feminist, not really a LGBT, perspective.

Eventually there will be other judgments by the court that will disappoint the LGBT community. They will become shrill and irate and claim that Gorsuch has changed his views and backpedaled but in fact they will not understand the premise of his argument and reasoning.  Indeed, the ERA, that unfortunately never passed, is an amendment that would have deemed equality not based on gender but sex.

It is refreshing to see the Supreme Court function as it was intended. A place where cases are argued and laws are created that take the long view and are not susceptible to the politics and fads of the day,

NOTE: The opinion above is only that of the author and does not represent the San Francisco Journal, investors or subsidiaries. Letters to the editors can be sent via the contact link below.

 

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Facebook’s Strange Terms of Service that Facilitates Fascism

“This came to yet another head last Friday night when Mark (Zuckerberg) decided Facebook would not remove Trump’s post in which he invoked a historically racist phrase to threaten violence against civilians. Mark suggested that it didn’t violate Facebook’s terms of service because Trump was a state actor and so his threat was more of a warning.”
Jessi Hempel, June 3, 2020 Will employee protests fix Facebook’s power problem?

What a strange terms of service. So if you are a “state actor” you can get away with racist hate speech, toxic and dangerous lies and sexist insults. But if you are a black man, in our society you get a knee in your neck and killed by the police for just breathing air. Facebook is toxic. It is really that simple. Mark Zuckerberg is simply a greedy capitalist… a lot like Donald Trump. Mark Zuckerberg is NOT your “friend.”

RELATED POST

Mark Zuckerberg’s Lost Notebooks – Further Proof that Facebook is Not Your Friend

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What I Would ask Donald Trump

It amazes me that reporters are still taken aback at how vile, misogynistic, sexist, selfish and self-aggrandizing Donald Trump is at press conferences.  This sort of behavior has been going on for as long as Donald Trump joined the world of entertainment and politics.  Reporters often stand amazed with their jaws dropped while Trump insults them and calls them bad reporters and their employers “fake news.” It is as though they have not realized that the rule book of civility was burned in 2015 as he climbed his way to power. I suggest that instead of ever thinking they will get a straight answer from this guy, play his silly game.

Instead of asking a question like “Dr. Fauci has stated that it is best that many parts of the economy stay in shutdown. Why against expert advice, do you think it is good to open up the restaurants and bars now?”  To which they will either get an incoherent rambling or an insult or two.

Perhaps it would be better to ask a question where you catch Trump off guard in such a way were he looks even dumber than he already is.  For example, “Mr. President, you stated last week that you have been taking  the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure for Covid-19. We were wonder if you gargle with bleach before of after you take the hydroxychloroquine?” Such a question would remind the room that Trump has recommended crazy medical theories in the past, and thus he could not deny that he recommended ingesting cleaning products.  The reason that this tactic is essential is that Trump refuses to govern and the only hope for the press is to simply state the truth with as much irony and humor as possible.

If Trump insults them once again, at least the press will get the last laugh.

 

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Softening the Edge – Examples of Weak Language at NPR

In journalism the choice of words to describe events and the world is critical to meaning. Often in the New York Times articles will state that President Trump “misrepresented the facts” or that he used “false and misleading statements.” This type of language avoids the obvious fact that the best word for what Trump does constantly is “lie.” Trump does not “misrepresent facts.” Every English teacher would take a red pen and cross out those two words and write “be more direct, simply use the word “lie”.”

Today the glossing over Donald Trump’s  lies is the most obvious watering down of direct language by the mainstream media. But this weak and soft language is common throughout many topics.

“President Trump was caught flat-footed with the Federal response to the coronavirus.”
– NPR News – May 2020

The term “caught flat-footed” is to my surprise not known by many people but the gist is that person who is “caught flat-footed” is innocent about something and was simply caught off-guard or perhaps by surprise. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump knowingly disregarded  urgent warnings by many of his top advisers – from health experts and even people in the business community. A more accurate choice of words would be that Trump “ignored warnings” and refused to utilize the powers of the federal government to prepare and protect citizens. To this day, he still thinks he can simply wish Covid-19 away.

“The shortcomings of the United States prison system”
– PBS News Hour – May 2020

What an odd phrase. “Shortcomings” allows the listener to project their own meaning on the story. “Shortcomings, you bet you! Let’s lock more poor people and people of color up! ” The United States prison system does not have “shortcomings.” The United States prison system is the “United States Prison Industrial Complex” and as Michele Alexander intelligently points out in “The New Jim Cow,” the prison system is simply used to control black people like laws were  in the Jim Crow era.

 

That the prison system has been largely privatized and a place for large corporate profits is the real story.  The shortcomings of this type of PBS Newshour journalism is that it waters down the truth and reframes the narrative to the advantage of the powerful. Language matters and eventually shapes the political dialogue and perceptions.

NOTE: The opinion above is only that of the author and does not represent the San Francisco Journal, investors or subsidiaries. Letters to the editors can be sent via the contact link below.

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Reflections on an Erratic, Narcissistic President

It is April 20th, 2020 and the world is in shutdown mode as the coronavirus travels around the globe. Health officials and governmental officials who listen to them and are reasonably intelligent have deemed human life as more important than short-term profits, stock market fluctuations and popularity polls.   California Governor Gavin Newsom who has been taking an intelligent and cautious path even referred to the people who have died of COVID-19 as “souls.”  I cannot remember a politician refer to humans as “souls” in a very long time.  It made me think that perhaps Gavin Newsom reads old political speeches from bygone eras. It sounded almost spiritual.

And then there is Donald Trump, who takes responsibility for nothing and credit for everything when things appear to go well. We found out that this is what “stable geniuses” do during the 2016 debates. The concept of going bankrupt over and over again and thus not having to pay federal income taxes was “intelligent.” That few questioned this as being unpatriotic, inept, irresponsible or slimy is odd.  And then when the stimulus package was ready to roll out, Trump insisted on delaying the payments for he insisted on having his signature on the checks; a strange twist of fate for someone who has avoided paying taxes.

Trump, even though he is in charge of the executive branch, sees the federal government as the enemy. This is why he insists on doing backroom deals with foreign governments, spewing nonsense and hyperbole on Twitter and in the end never actually leading and  taking responsibility for anything associated with him. Months ago when the pandemic was due to hit and medical supplies where low, Trump refused to invoke the Defense Production Act and take over sectors of manufacturing businesses to create the medical supplies needed for such a scenario.  This is because after years of dodging taxes and NOT paying taxes, he cannot fathom that the checks people write to the federal government can actually be used to help the populous as a whole.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.”
Rahm Emanuel -Interview to the Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2008.

What is truly perplexing is that all politicians know that it is times of crises when you can act in a way that will bring people over to your side that usually would never support you. If Donald Trump simply listened to the experts in the room, and made some key decisions at key times, less people would be six feet under and ironically his poll numbers would be through the roof and he would be unstoppable in 2020. But then perhaps these are the choices of a “stable genius.”

Save our souls.

NOTE: The opinion above is only that of the author and does not represent the San Francisco Journal, investors or subsidiaries. Letters to the editors can be sent via the contact link below.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s Lost Notebooks – Further Proof that Facebook is Not Your Friend

In the March 2020 edition of Wired Magazine is an article written by Steven Levy entitled Mark Zuckerberg’s Lost Notebooks. Steven Levy has known Zuckerberg for many years so had a fair amount of access. These notebooks are where Zuckerberg  plotted to rule the world and the notion of physical evidence like notebooks surely adds to the intrigue and mystique of one of the powerful players on the world stage.

Of all the internet billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg is perhaps the most controversial. Starting with your date of birth and your high school, Facebook’s creepy form of surveillance capitalism built the Facebook empire. The Facebook empire influences all things in our modern society –  journalism, marketing,  advertising, commerce, education, politics and personal lives to name the obvious. It is a platform build on modern humans’ natural addictive tendencies, narcissism and social insecurities and is nothing about the justice and equality that seemed possible in the early days of the internet. That people are so gullible to the deviousness of Facebook is surprising.

The secret sauce of Facebook is outlined below:

“Zuckerberg envisioned a three-tier hierarchy of what made stories compelling, imagining that people are driven chiefly by a blend of curiosity and narcissism. His top tier was “stories about you.” The second involved stories “centered around your social circle.” In the notebook, he provided examples of the kinds of things this might include: changes in your friends’ relationships, life events, “friendship trends (people moving in and out of social circles),” and “people you’ve forgotten about resurfacing.”

“The least important tier on the hierarchy was a category he called “stories about things you care about and other interesting things.” Those might include “events that might be interesting,” “external content,” “paid content,” and “bubbled up content.”

From Wired Magazines’ “Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Lost Notebooks”

This secret sauce reaffirms my disgust with Facebook and social media as a whole. Web 2.0 and Facebook in particular has perpetuated our present era of what I call the era of “Digital Narcissism.”

“He was an avid Latin student, developing a fanboy affinity for the emperor Augustus Caesar, an empathetic ruler who also had an unseemly lust for power and conquest.”

There is this tendency in the United States of adulation of the rich. The notion that Zuckerberg was an “avid Latin student” attempts to affirm a notion that Zuckerberg was some sort of child genius who studied the classics. Whenever I have heard Mark Zuckerberg speak in public he does not seem worldly, well educated or secure in the least. Memorizing a few Latin phrases when you were eighteen to help you conquer a video game does not a Latin scholar make. In reality, Zuckerberg was mostly writing php “for loops” and working on “membership data models. ” Latin scholar… yeah right.

Zuckerberg’s initial reaction to criticism was most often defensive. But when misinformation could not be denied and Congress came calling, he clicked back into apologize-and-move-on mode.

And then near the end of the article there is this completely strange and obtuse  sentence that would make even  George Orwell snicker. “When misinformation could not be denied” means when written in plain and clear English – “when the truth came out. “ Indeed, truth is in short supply and Facebook is in the business of often perpetuating lies.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Lost Notebooks is an interesting and insightful piece but as with most articles in Wired, barely questions the digital powers that be and instead holds them up in reverence.  Reverence is not journalism –  it is cheer-leading.  There is no mention of Facebook’s tax avoidance, the millions of accounts where passwords were in plain text and hacked, the perpetuation of false advertising and political smears and lies that are ubiquitous on the platform.  A quote not mentioned that was literally Facebook’s mantra for years is “move fast and break things.” Now that Facebook has broken lots of things, why cheer on Goliath?

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Hiram Johnson, Grooms and Corpses

Hiram Johnson, governor of California around 1911 and part of the Progressive Republican party. It is so odd to think that Republicans at one point were actually progressive, fighting for the environment, working folk, attempting to combat the concentration of wealth.

Below is amusing quote from an excellent book on California history.

“The personality of Hiram Johnson bore some resemblance to that of Theodore Roosevelt, and in the early years of their association Johnson exploited this resemblance to the point of imitating Roosevelt’s gestures and exclamations. Both were extraordinarily intelligent and courageous political fighters, but also had in extraordinary degree the human failing of self-centeredness. It might have been said of Johnson, as it was said of Roosevelt that he disliked attending weddings and funerals because at a wedding he was not the groom and at the funeral he was not the corpse.”
California – An Interpretive History – Eight Edition James Rawls, Walton Bean (p. 280)

Progressive Republican party, these days seems like quite an oxymoron. While politicians are al
ways full of themselves, the quote above puts a comic spin on the self-indulgence

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Zoe Lofgren States the Obvious

“Representative Zoe Lofgren said that like Nixon, Trump abused his power when he attempted to influence the 2020 presidential election. But unlike the former, Trump “used a foreign power to do it.”UPI.com – House leans on Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s experience from Nixon, Clinton impeachments

Zoe Lofgren is a Rock Star
Zoe Lofgren is doing a great job as well as Adam Schiff and all the house managers. In recent times two Republicans were impeached by the House of Representatives for attempting to rig a Presidential election – Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. Nixon had the wherewithal to simply resign and get on an airplane, walk up the stairs with Pat, raising his arms with that ironic and  stupid victory sign thing that Roger Stone (now in jail) has tattooed on his back.

Bill Clinton, however, after Ken Starr followed him around like a gringo Inspector Clouseau for two years , ended up getting impeached for getting far to close to the interns, surely sexual harassment  and personal misconduct.

So there is a moral to this story. Never trust sleazy hotel mobsters who like to hide their taxes and thus ties to Russian mobsters. Never trust paranoid, baritone, hard drinking former governors with really bad posture. And surely never trust “neo-liberal” saxophone players who chase dresses, harass women, never practice and can barely play in-tune.

Trump Impeachment Trial Summary
Sure, let us have more witnesses for otherwise this would not even pass the sniff-test for city jury duty. President Trump has been publicly calling foreign  governments to meddle in our national elections since 2016. The trial is simply about Trump again meddle in our elections through executive and back channels. This is completely obvious. Republican Senators. Have you completely lost your senses?

NOTE: The opinion above is only that of the author and does not represent the San Francisco Journal, investors or subsidiaries. Letters to the editors can be sent via the contact link below.

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Please do not pray for the President – It Creeps Him Out

“Even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by continually saying “I pray for the President,” when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing that you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!”
– Donald Trump’s letter to The Honorable Nancy Pelosi – 12/18/2019

We live in such strange times and this letter to the Speaker of the House by the President Trump is just another example. That the President gets so irritated about Nancy Pelosi’s Catholicism and her daily prayer is actually sort of funny. It reminds me a bit of the final scene in the movie The Princess Bride in which the Spaniard states over and over again in the final duel “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” After about the fifth time the Count, who Inigo Montoya is about to kill yells “STOP SAYING THAT!” Donald Trump is just like the Count. “STOP PRAYING FOR ME! IT’S CREEPING ME OUT!”

Speaker Pelosi has gotten under his skin and Trump just cannot take it anymore. It may be Trump’s downfall in the end, and hopefully the Evangelicals that voted for him should be aghast. Questioning the ritual and power of prayer. How un-Christian. How un-American.

My bumper sticker for those “fly-over” states.

Please do not pray for the President – It Creeps Him Out

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Treating Symptoms, Not Causes – Why the United States Will Never Adopt a Single-Payer Medical System

It’s Treatment Based on Symptoms, Not Income
Billboard in San Francisco – Sutter Health

That healthcare can be a lucrative line of work has been a feature of the healthcare system in the United States for over 150 years. The American Medical Association (AMA) has been doing all it can to elevate doctors and dismiss community traditions like midwives and alternative medicine. Of course when there is money involved all sorts of shady people come out of the woodwork, trying to make a buck. Think of the wallpaper that you sometime see on folksy restaurant bathroom walls of reproductions of late 18th century newspapers. Ads for tonics and elixirs, perhaps often disguised liquor, that cure everything from heart conditions, digestion issues and even your sex life.

This sort of commercialization of healthcare, even when they are  “not for profit” institutions is so ubiquitous that people rarely think twice. So when I saw the Sutter Health slogan “It’s Treatment Based on Symptoms, Not Income” I was struck with the thought of whether this was created by the Sutter Health marketing department, the Sutter Health finance department or the Sutter Health doctors. It all sounds so altruistic and noble but give me a break; the CEO of Sutter Health a few years back made over 7 million dollars a year; the CEO of Kaiser Permanente made 16 million a year. Even though these institutions go under the moniker of “non-profit” in the end it is really about money and just like the petrol-chemical and banking industries, the main message of most marketing is often not about the actual product but about the political spin and supposed benevolence of the organization. I would wager that there are people today dealing with the Sutter Health billing department.

A larger question would be what does “treating the symptoms” actually mean?  If you were a roofer, treating the symptoms would mean that your leaking roof would never actually get fixed. Instead of treating the cause, that perhaps your roof is twenty years old and needs to be replaced, roofing companies would simply charge you for expensive plastics buckets indefinitely to capture the symptom – the water dripping through the ceiling. If you were a glass shop, you would indeed treat the symptom, the broken window but never get to the cause – perhaps  the golf driving range next door.

If our healthcare is now simply about “treating symptoms,” our healthcare system will over time become more expensive and never become single-payer. There are simply trillions of dollars, whole economies, insurance companies,  medical technology companies, a cultural ethos and entire small cities built around our current healthcare system.  That the pharmaceutical industry is also built around treating symptoms simply closes the loop.

A better slogan, but one where there is a lot less money to be made would be,

“Identify the cause,  the symptoms may go away.”

But that would would take some actual work and people always want a quick fix – give me a pill, make it go away.

Kaiser Permanente

While taking the BART back from a show in Oakland, I was struck by the fact that every single billboard in the 19th Street Station was bought out by Kaiser Permanente.  All fifty or so billboards had doctors looking directly at you.  With the slogans “There When You Need Us”, “Care at the Center”. This must have cost a lot of money. Every billboard was rented which meant perhaps fifty units in one of the most expensive markets in the United States. Meanwhile, every few minutes a somewhat desperate looking person would approach you  panhandling and looking for a few bucks. The irony was a bit hard to take.

Modern medicine, especially the technological advances when it comes to intricate surgeries, are amazing. If you get in a car accident, the tools available to doctors today are much more powerful than just ten years ago, but that is just part of the story of our current state of Western medicine.

The “Medical Industrial Complex” is upon us. Dwight Eisenhower who’s final speech as president gave us the term, “Military Industrial Complex” is probably just shaking his head. It is probably dangerous for healthcare slogans to be made by marketing departments and in the end not good medicine.

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Theodore Roosevelt and Elizabeth Warren – The Similarities Abound

An angle not represented in the media is the similarities in the policies and platforms of Theodore Roosevelt and Elizabeth Warren.  In the media, most often there is this constant score keeping of who is on the left or right and how someone went further in a certain “directon.” Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for universal healthcare put the media in a tizzy.  “Good grief! That is socialism! Elizabeth Warren has gone further to the left!”  In the New York Times you can read The Billionaires Are Getting Nervous about the possibility that they would be taxed more than they are now and how the economy will be in shambles if we help poor people with healthcare. A pretty odd headline when you consider that billionaires have in essence little to be be nervous about. They do not have to worry about their next meal, surely have a fancy private doctor and will always have a roof over their heads – probably three or four mansions. Really? Nervous? That Trump slashed the marginal tax rate by 21% for billionaires  just increased the inequities in the United States. Let’s not worry about the billionaires and their anxieties that they may one day be simply millionaires and maybe even have to stand in line at the DMV.

In all aspects of modern life and especially in marketing, social media and politics the maxim that “perception is reality” seems to gain more and more traction.  The phrase “perception is reality”  is a simplification  of an 18th century theory called “immaterialism” or “subjective idealism.”  It’s the childish notion that something does not exist if it is not perceived. It elevates reality to only things that are registered in our senses.

Theodore Roosevelt was male. Elizabeth Warren is female. How could these two people be possibly similar? They look so different. One is a vigorous macho male who traveled to Africa to shoot wild elephants. The other a very smart, experienced, competent woman who probably has never shot a wild boar, a deer or even a pheasant! Simply look beyond the covers and the similarities abound. Let me list out the similarities. I will put Roosevelt’s name first just because he came first and is now dead, not because he is a guy.

Both Theodore Roosevelt and Elizabeth Warren where once Republicans who left the Republican party.

After being the youngest president and a Republican, in 1912 Roosevelt left the party and helped formed the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party which called for wide-ranging progressive reforms.

Elizabeth Warren was a registered Republican from 1991 to 1996. She now is running for president as a Democrat.

Both Theodore Roosevelt and Elizabeth Warren proposed universal healthcare.

Roosevelt saw the government as a crucial force in regulating industries to improve the health of people. He saw through the Pure Food and Drug Act, Meat Inspection Act. While Theodore Roosevelt lived at a time before antibiotics and had infected abscesses in his leg craved out with a sharp knife,  you get a sense that he believed in some form of universal health care with the government playing the prime role.

“Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part.” Theodore Roosevelt – 1910

Elizabeth Warren has a  Medicare for All plan which gives everyone good insurance and cuts their health care costs to nearly zero – without increasing middle-class taxes one penny.

Elizabeth supports Medicare for All, which would provide all Americans with a public health care program. Medicare for All is the best way to give every single person in this country a guarantee of high-quality health care. Everybody is covered. Nobody goes broke because of a medical bill. No more fighting with insurance companies. Elizabeth Warren – 2019

Both Theodore Roosevelt and Elizabeth Warren saw the monopolies of their day as a problem.

Roosevelt through anti-trust laws was able to break up the railroads and regulate food industries and big-oil.  The list is long and complicated, but like our present era of vast income inequities, the early 20th century had its similarities with vast fortunes in very few hands

Elisabeth Warren wants to breakup the tech monopolies like Facebook, Amazon and Google. If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, he would do the same thing.

Perception is not reality. Reality is the actual stuff that exists even if we do not see it. It is the stuff under the glossy cover.