In this week’s edition of Idaho Politics Weekly Luke Mayville has written a letter thanking all his volunteers for helping pass Medicaid expansion. A pleasant gesture for sure, but to me it really points out the great chasm between progressive values and traditional classical liberal (today called conservative) philosophy. In his article Professor Mayville never […]
“Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking” Speaker of The Idaho House of Representatives Scott Bedke and the majority leadership in the Idaho House offered an editorial in Idaho Politics Weekly entitled “Medicaid Expansion is throwing thousands off their insurance”. Remember—”You can keep your doctor you can keep your plan”?—NOT. When politicians and government […]
On July 13th of this year, I penned an editorial published in The Gem State Patriot entitled “Where are our Legislators on Health Care?” Several other Idaho physicians have asked the same question and opined in editorial pages around the State asking similar questions. It has been obvious to many that the lobbyists in the […]
One point was made that made me reconsider a small corner of my position. Mat Erpelding, the Minority leader in the Idaho House, related a story that was interesting but not relevant to the issue. He is an Assistant Professor of Recreational Studies. When he held a similar position at Texas A&M he had 20 […]
I grew up in Ohio in the 1960s. In Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, football was and remains today a religion. I was lucky enough in the late ’60s and early ’70s to play for two state championship high school football teams and one NCAA Division 3 Championship football team. My high school team was completely […]
When my father returned from Japan after serving for 5 years during and after the Korean War, he carried with him a small book that several years earlier had been turned into a well-known Japanese play called “Rashamon” In the play 5 witnesses—including an apparition of the murdered protagonist, recount the rape and murder of […]
I was sorry to hear that Senator Bernie Sanders had an ischemic event crescendo angina or a heart attack while campaigning in Las Vegas. I was also relieved to know that he was being treated at a state of the art medical center where I know many of the physicians and surgeons that practice there. […]
So few people today in our country have an appreciation of our own national history. Watching the news out of Washington can only be depressing. Everything is viewed through the lens of politics. Even the basic sciences have become politicized. Medical research, global warming, public health, have all been compromised by the funneling of political […]
Over the past 9 years, we have argued in many places and forums the three points that lead this article. Our opponents have argued otherwise. We are now seeing these arguments being made in the national press more frequently and forcibly because the true numbers on The ACA costs and promises are beginning to appear. […]
Plate tectonics is the geologic theory that the earth’s crust—the lithosphere that is about 60 miles thick and sits on a thin mantle over the earth’s core, is constantly moving. I have a theory of political tectonics that describes how various political theories and ideas sit over a core of values that are held in […]
In 1974, I was assigned as a Navy medical student for 3 months active duty at Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Portsmouth VA. This was at the end of the Viet Nam War and I had the privilege of being involved in the care of many wounded and injured sailors, soldiers and Marines including 36 returning […]
We have a problem where I live every spring when the runoff from out winter snowpack in the mountains raises the flows in the Boise River. When that happens the animals that take refuge along the river find their ways into the basements and yards and ponds just a few feet above the river banks. […]