Month: June 2021

As time has passed since the 2020 presidential election, I’ve often wondered what is happening with us and our politics. I really thought that after the previous four years and the departure of the former president that our civility and sanity would be restored. Whoa; was I wrong! It almost seems as if many of…

Yesterday, I drove my granddaughter to Jacksonville to catch her flight back home to Colorado. Betty and I had picked her up a week earlier in Orlando where she and her volleyball team from Denver had taken part in a national tournament. She spent the week with us here on St. Simons, and we had…

The United States presently spends nearly five times more per person on health care than does Canada. The U.S. administrative costs came out to $812 billion in 2017 or $2,497 per person compared with $551 per person in Canada. In the World Health Organization’s ranking of healthcare system performance among 191 member nations published in…

This past Monday I posted “Straight Talk About Health Care.” I thought it also might be helpful to learn more about systems in other countries, especially those with public or nationalized healthcare. This post is submitted by George Shafer,* a Canadian friend, who lives in Almonte, Ontario, near Ottawa. “Canada’s healthcare system is run by…

My post on the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Obamacare provoked a response which I feel compelled to share with you. It was submitted by Bill Potter, an attorney who spent twenty years as a member of a not for profit health care insurance company and a large multi-specialty physicians group. The system has about…

The lopsided 7-2 decision yesterday favoring the Affordable Care Act was a welcome relief and a signal that Obama’s healthcare program will be around for the foreseeable future. This is the third time that Obamacare has been upheld by the high court. It also has survived 63 challenges from Republicans in congress.The court specifically rejected…

If our gridlock politics were not enough, we have Joe Manchin playing the good guy and Mitch McConnell, as usual, playing the “grim reaper.” Both present insights into the state of Washington politics. If you take Senator Manchin at his word, he is trying to be the grown-up in the room seeking compromise and fair…

After a couple months of cool and stormy weather, summer has arrived with its usual blessings of easy living. The weather has gotten warmer along with sunny days. It’s time for porch sitting and hanging out in the White Pine Saloon in the evenings. I’ve finally gotten on top of needed work and the place…

I have enclosed Peggy Noonan’s piece from today’s Wall Street Journal as an example of what conservatives and others might say in response to my offer to print their take on the attack on the Capitol this past January. Noonan, as most of you know, is a conservative columnist who speaks plainly and tells the…

It would be helpful if the conservatives, Republicans and libertarians who read these pages might contribute a guest blog from time to time. There is a rich variety of thought out there on politics and contemporary events. While we frequently see things differently we can learn from one another and, in doing so, gain respect…