THE PALEOCRAT TRIBUNE

A fictitious conversation between a conservative politician and I over the issue of healthcare:

Paleo: Sir, do you support the troops?

CP: Of course I love the troops. They are some of the best and brightest America has to offer. These brave men and women embody what it means to be loyal, to sacrifice, and to love one’s country. They are fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, they are real American heroes.

Paleo: Alright. Now, you know as well as I do that many of these real American heroes end up in war, and war is a messy thing. Unfortunately, many making it through the fog do so with injuries, whether they be physical, psychological, or even emotional…

CP: Of course. I have been to Iraq. I have been to Afghanistan. I have been to medical facilities around the world where our troops are being cared for. I have listened to their stories, and as a congressman I have promised to honor their sacrifice and commitment to liberty and freedom, both here and abroad.

Paleo: Well, it is interesting that you mention that. It actually touches on what I wanted to talk to you about. As you are well aware, many of these troops incur physical injuries that leave them  temporarily or even permanently disabled. And if they aren’t coming home with physical wounds, many are returning with service connected psychological disability. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bi-polar, anxiety and panic disprders, you name it. These are rampant!

CP: I am very aware of this problem. It pains me to see the extent of these ailments This is one of the many reasons I fight so hard for increasing funding for the Veterans Affairs. Their services are invaluable to the men and women who have served this country.

Paleo: Do you believe that the VA is providing top-notch health care?

CP: Absolutely. But I think that we as a nation have an obligation to continue assuring them this care. I have a consistent voting record to increase funding to the VA.

Paleo: So it is your position that the VA is providing top of the line health care?

CP: Yes.

Paleo: Is it as good as the type of health care provided to men and women who haven’t joined the military?

CP: Yes. The technology is state of the art, and the care they receive from the staff is very good.

Paleo: So you think that a single-payer system of socialized medicine provides health care that is just as good or even better than the private for-profit system?

CP: Um, well no. America’s health system is the best in the world, and it is the best in the world because it is a private system that relies upon competition.

Paleo: But you just said that the taxpayer-funded, socialized health care system known as the VA is top of the line, that their technology was state of the art, and that they provide excellent patient care.

CP: Yes.

Paleo: Then why did you backpedal by immediately declaring that very same system and the care it provides to be inferior to privately owned, for-profit health care facilities?

CP: The VA provides great services for our brave men and women…

Paleo: Yeah, yeah, I got that part. But it is inferior to the kind of health care that civilians receive in private, for-profit facilities.

CP: I never said that.

Paleo: Sure you did. Now, given that you believe private, for-profit health care is superior to the taxpayer funded socialized medicine of the VA, will you now fight for the complete privatization or abolition of the VA?

CP: …

Paleo: Where is the answer to that in your playbook, sir?

Option 1:

• If you believe that socialized medicine in evil.
• If you believe that it provides inferior services over against private, for-profit providers.
• If you want veterans to get the best care possible.
• Then you will fight tooth-and-nail to completely privatize the VA.

Option 2:

• If you believe the VA is providing the best possible care for veterans.
• If you don’t wish civilians to be covered under a similar system.
• Then you don’t mind civilians receiving inferior care for no other reason that their not having decided to join the armed forces.

My Laptopasaurus Rex began showing the sure signs of extinction three weeks ago. First it decided to shut down for what appeared to be no apparent purpose. Then it stopped allowing me to get online. Worse yet, L Rex no longer recognized the drive used for the internet card.

In sum, the computer became little more than a glorified typewriter. I would type, save, listen to music, and watch DVDs. Oh, and I could play solitaire or pinball. Outside of these basic functions, the computer was relatively worthless.

So I bought a Mac. Figured that an elitist such as me ought to join the club of “haves” in the world of journalism and mass communication. I may even go full-blown arrogant and slap an Apple sticker on my Honda Element… well, not until I put an “I Love Latin Mass” sticker on my Mac.

It is rare that I ever feel that unsettling sensation of being unable to put thoughts or feelings into words. I believe it has happened to me once or twice before, both times ranking up there with moments best forgotten. But not this time…

Happy Six Year Anniversary,
Mr. Good, Bad, and Ugly

My radio program has been referred to by many on the right and the left as a propaganda campaign against free trade and capitalism. I would prefer to call it a truth crusade, but I presume any good propagandist would say as much.

Admitting as much places my endorsement of the documentary “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices” in the realm of predictability somewhere between the death and taxes. It is for this reason that I will restrict this post to a number of statistics and facts that I thought to be of special significance.

• Wal-Mart drives down retail wages by $3 billion per annum.
• Healthcare for Wal-Mart associates costs taxpayers $1,577,000,000 per annum.
• Average Wal-Mart associate makes $13,861 per annum. CEO Lee Scott makes over $28 million.
• Wal-Mart imports almost $20 billion from communist China per annum.
• The 200,000+ Indian women from Bangladesh working for Wal-Mart make $0.13-$0.17 hourly.
• 2004: Walton family received a federal tax cut equivalent to $91,5000 per hour.

Cutting to the chase: The film is most certainly worth your time. In fact, it should be mandatory for any and all local governments debating whether or not to bring Wal-Mart into their neck of the woods.

American healthcare is a wreck. Cost for insurance is through the roof, employer-provided healthcare is going the way of the dodo, and close to 75 million Americans are left without any medical coverage. What should be done? Anything?

It must be granted from the outset that I am ill-equipped to discuss the intricate details of the healthcare industry. Like most Americans, I know very little about the ins-and-outs of healthcare. This isn’t to say we are completely ignorant. No, we are relatively familiar with the waiting rooms, the stack of forms to fill out, and the impersonal care of physicians. We are also all too aware of the increasingly outrageous costs for even the most basic medical care.

My initial glimpse into the system was when Angela and I had our first child. Samantha was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on May 22, 2004. I had recently been medically discharged from the military and was receiving healthcare from the Veterans Affairs (VA). This did not cover my wife, Angela, who decided to continue working for Staples in order to remain covered under their health insurance program.

Angela went on maternity leave just prior to her due date, and everything seemed to be flowing quite smoothly. That was, of course, until she had the baby. What Staples hadn’t told her was that when an employee goes on paid maternity leave, all but one thing remains the same. While they continue getting paid, and while they are assured their position upon return, the automatic withholding of funds for health coverage ceases. In short, rather than the employer withholding funds used for health insurance prior to cutting the check, they leave the withholding and payment up to the one on medical leave.

This omission was rather strange, and it was so for at least two reasons. First, Angela had worked at Staples for five years. She was a valued employee and had even been offered a high-paying position in a store soon to open in Connecticut. Second, if there was ever a time where an employee would be in need of such vital information, it would be when they are on leave for medical purposes.

Sadly, we only found this out after Samantha was born. Actually, it was about 15 minutes after she was born. Hearing from the nurse that we had no insurance was one thing, but being handed a bill of over $20,000 was something altogether different.

Staples insisted that it was not their responsibility to tell their employees going on medical leave that the medical coverage they had received for five years would no longer be taken out prior to cutting the check. Rather, it was the responsibility of the employee to ask whether or not the company would continue withholding the funds that they had been withholding for all those years, all of which were times when not on something referred to as medical leave.

Since this instance, we have had a number of bills. We have worked towards paying off outstanding bills, but accidents happen. Angela cut her thumb while doing dishes. She received a couple stitches, which also came with a bill for around $1,200. I took a ride in an ambulance which resulted in a little more than $600. They thought I was having a heart attack. The hospital hooked me up to a machine, drew blood, and diagnosed me with having stomach spasms that caused a chain reaction of unfortunate sensations that ultimately led to me hyperventilating and, consequently, having a heart-rate registering through the roof. After being discharged within an hour, I received a pleasant little bill for over $2,000. To make matters worse, the doctor laughed as I was told that a mere passing out would have resolved the problem, as my body would have tried to readjust itself.

Ambulatory care overreacts: $600
Doctor tells me I had gas pain: $2,000

So why am I talking about any of this? Why should you care? Maybe you don’t. But for those who have been dealt a tough hand in life, or any who know what it feels like to be shafted by employers in cahoots with insurance companies wishing to dodge any bullet from billing, or anyone who has had to pay thousands of dollars to be told that they don’t have a problem, this entire topic is meaningful. I would dare say that it is, or at least ought to be, meaningful for all Americans, as most all of us are in need of healthcare and will, in all likelihood, rely upon health insurance at some point in our days on earth.

As I admitted in the beginning of this uncharacteristically long post, I am ill-equipped to deal with the nitty-gritty of the healthcare debate. But I am most certainly someone with a vested interest in the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of not only me and mine, but also my fellow Americans. I am concerned enough, and compassionate enough, to begin looking into the matter with a critical eye, hoping that maybe we can come to a place, as a people, where care will be the first thing on the minds of medical providers and where bills are last on ours.

I am being interviewed by a student doing a project concerning the ordination of women. After replying to her request, a friend and I wanted to search YouTube for video footage of “Wymyn Priest” ordinations. Much to my surprise, a search for “women priests” resulted in this.

Ah, it feels good to be #1.

I hope to have short reviews of these two movies finished by the weekend.

John Medaille of The Distributist Review has written an excellent piece on Mises and the attempt of  various Catholics and conservatives to baptize him as one of their own.

NOTE: The comment section is a must read.

Attacking the freedoms of speech and the press is dangerous business. This is especially true for those of us hoping to make a name for ourselves in journalism. The idea of a journalist writing against these freedoms sounds about as absurd as a man making a verbal case against breathing, with his ability to argue the point being conditioned upon the very thing he is arguing against.

It was all the better, then, that Pope Leo XIII wasn’t a journalist. In his 1888 encyclical “Libertas Praetantissimum” (On the Nature of Human Liberty), the pope dealt with the these so-called freedoms of speech and of press. Almost 100 years after the U.S. Bill of Rights had declared them to be recognized as both natural and divine rights belonging to men, the pope denounced them (or how they had become popularly understood and applied) as absurd and dangerous to the common good and the wellbeing of the State.

Of these two freedoms he said,

“[23] It is hardly necessary to say that there can be no such right as this, if it be not used in moderation, and it is pass beyond the bounds and end of all true liberty… it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice.”

In the same section of Libertas he goes on to say that material should be prudently propagated throughout the Sate, leaving public authorities with the power to repress those things made up of lying opinions, vices which corrupt the heart and moral life, as well as anything that may be considered ruinous to the state.

Were only this to have been written today. The American media, and presumably the majority of modern American Catholics, would be in a foaming frenzy! Politicians would simply add this to their already long list of issues where avoiding ”the right thing to do” is their top-priority. Partisans and pundits would squabble over where truth and justice begin and where falsehood and justice end. Talking heads would be preaching doomsday to liberty as their ability to say whatever they want about whoever they want whenever they want is placed on the chopping block. And let’s not forget the corporations and advertisers! For the first time in many years they would have to admit that their brand isn’t number one, but rather comes in a close third. To say that America would be flipped upside down would be an understatement.

But the American media has no reason to fear, for American Catholics take Catholic Social Doctrine as seriously as Hollywood takes Macully Kulken. Still, for those Catholics few and far between who cherish the social teaching of Mother Church, this poses plenty of difficult questions requiring our serious consideration.

Links to other encyclicals related to this topic:

Christianae Reipublicae (On the Dangers of Anti-Christian Writings)

Vigilante Cura (On Motion Pictures)

Miranda Prorsus (On the Communications Field: Motion Pictures, Radio, and Television)

“[3]…The social question and its associated controversies, such as the nature and duration of labor, the wages to be paid, and workingmen’s strikes, are not simply economic in character. Therefore they cannot be numbered among those which can be settled apart from ecclesiastical authority. ‘The precise opposite it the truth. It is first of all moral and religious, and for that reason its solution is to be expected mainly from the moral law and the pronouncements of religion.’

“[4]… Consequently, such so-called confessional Catholic associations must certainly be established and promoted in every way in Catholic regions as well as in all other districts where it can be presumed that they can sufficiently assist the various needs of their members.”

“[8]We are convinced, Venerable Brethren, that you will diligently take care to see that all these directives of Ours are conscientiously and exactly fulfilled, carefully and constantly reporting to Us concerning this very serious problem. Since We have taken this matter under Our jurisdiction and, after hearing the views of the Bishops, since the decision rests with Us, We hereby command all Catholics of good will to desist from all disputes among themselves concerning this matter. We are confident that with fraternal charity and perfect obedience they will completely and gladly carry out Our command.”

Singulari Quadam (On Labor Organizations)
St. Pope Pius X