Republican right wing extremists ignore the quality of life for American voters

Opinion Letter echo: Republicans in House need to be replaced

I am at a complete loss to understand what some weird GOP House members are doing, including their Speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

Published in the Star Advertiser in Honolulu Hawaii.

Republicans looking stupid! Weird Kevin McCarthy

And check out this letter (although written in June 2023, this opinion letter applies to all Republican right wing irresponsible fiscal policies- highlights support for veterans):

(Editor's note: The following is a letter addressed to GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy which the writer shared with The Daily Independent.)

Dear Mr. Speaker McCarthy:   I am writing today on behalf of the Ridgecrest Chamber of Commerce and its more than 265 members that operate in and employ the residents of the greater Ridgecrest area. Since 1946, we have advocated for building this community. 

As the Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce, I implore our elected officials to engage in efforts to restore Ridgecrest Regional Hospital to a level of stability that will allow continual service to the Indian Wells Valley and beyond.

As I am sure you are aware, many California and US hospitals have been struggling post COVID. Our local community hospital, Ridgecrest Regional Hospital, provides most healthcare services in our community. From physician offices to radiology and laboratory as well as the emergency room and inpatient care, including surgery and obstetrics. The Ridgecrest Regional Hospital also operates our only skilled nursing facility as well as home health and the local ambulance. The nearest hospital with the same services is two hours away which creates a burden for residents in this community and would be prohibitive for many.

The Ridgecrest Chamber recognizes the importance of quality of life and its correlation with recruitment and retention. We work closely with employers and organizations on building community. Having access to quality health care is a crucial part of basic quality of life not only for individuals, but for its impact on public safety and availability of services. Without a functional hospital the ability to retain employees from local law enforcement and teachers to the engineers who work at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, protecting the warfighter and the nation, will decline greatly.

We know that the significance of China Lake Naval Air Weapon Station contributions to national safety and security warranted the public and political support to approve more than $3 billion in funding to restore the installation after the earthquakes of July 4, and July 5, 2019. 

Republicans destroying America! Speaker Kevin McCarthy ignores the needs of the people in his own state of California!

When the repairs are finished, it will be one of the world’s premier research, development, test and evaluation facilities. Even before the Ridgecrest earthquake and the pandemic, base leadership noted significant challenges to recruitment and retention in our technical workforce. If the Indian Wells Valley is going to have any chance of providing the kind of quality of life that supports those hiring efforts, we believe retaining a thriving hospital plays a crucial role in any future success.

Additionally, we have many veterans in our community that rely on our hospital for their care. With the expansion of community care for veterans, the hospital is seeing many more patients yet is not receiving sufficient reimbursement for the cost of care. RRH is concerned that the VA contracts with large insurance companies take funds away from providers that should be used for our veterans. 

It is asked that you look at the VA processes and ensure Ridgecrest Regional Hospital and its physicians are being paid sufficiently.

California’s hospitals suffered staggering financial setbacks throughout the pandemic and some facilities continue to struggle. Ridgecrest Regional Hospital’s struggle began with the 2019 earthquake damages. They are one of the larger employers in their community and serve as one of the few sources of medical care for patients. Now, more than ever, patients need a sense of security and reliability when it comes to their community health system. Assembly bill 412 provides a lifeline to struggling hospitals and helps to ensure our state’s health system remains viable and operational.

Hospital shutdowns or service reductions threaten jobs, patients, and communities. These facilities require immediate financial assistance when they are struggling, and AB 412 provides the framework for this solution. The bill requires hospitals that receive the funds to develop a plan to get out of financial distress and return to profitability, thus preventing the squandering of General Fund allocations. We have been told that the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital intends to apply when the loan application process is finally opened. There are concerns that the program is grossly underfunded and with the number of hospitals in dire financial state in California, there may be very little funding for our hospital to sustain itself until the Medi-Cal rates are increased.

We ask you, as our Legislator, to ensure that our community hospital is eligible for financial assistance, including the emergency loan program, seismic relief, Department of Defense funding (as available), and increased Medi-Cal reimbursement, as well as review of VA processes. Thank you for your attention on this very important matter.

Very respectfully,  from Rebecca McCourt, Executive Director,

Ridgecrest Chamber of Commerce

Lock Up the Former Guy #TFG

Echo Letter to the Editor, Published 20 Feb 2021: "Lock Trump up!"

Jake Pickering published in The Daily Independent* newspaper.

Former Guy Donald Trump incited a deadly insurrection against the U.S. government, according to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

 January 6, attack on the US Capitol building by a pro-Trump #TFG mob, 

January 6, was a disgrace!  American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism... Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor, they tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President. They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth, because he was angry he had lost an election... There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it... This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing President who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out...”

Lock Trump up!

From Jake Pickering in  Arcata, Calif.

*Ashland, Kentucky

Immigration based on "need" in America must focus on supporting those who will work in the economy

Echo published in The Daily Independent in Ashland Kentucky

(MaineWriter - the birth rate in Maine would be zero if the state's Franco-Americans had stopped having children. The birthrate for Irish women in Maine is statistically zero. Maine is per capital the oldest state in the nation.  Unless the state improves the birthrate, there will not be enough care givers to help the aging population.)

People are the primary asset of any society. 

By Megan McArdle, a columnist with The Washington Post

In my summary of the McArdle opinion, the fact is, our US birthrate is getting too low to support an aging population. Therefore, what America needs is more immigrants who are willing to work in jobs that support the economy.  The proposal by selfish Republicans to establish criteria for "educated immigrants only', will not contribute to reinforcing our population needs.)

That's true in the lofty spiritual sense and in the crass financial one: Other people produce both the economic goods and the tax revenue that sustain the nation.

Like any other asset, this one needs to be replenished by continual reinvestment. A society that stops replacing itself is like a trust-fund kid dipping into the capital. The accounts empty at an accelerating pace, and a bill eventually comes due that cannot be paid.

Virtually the entire rich world is now in varying stages of that cycle. In 2000, only three rich-world countries -- the United States, New Zealand and Iceland -- averaged two or more children per woman. Today, only New Zealand is still replacing itself. The average for American women has dropped to 1.76 children, according to a new report from the National Vital Statistics System.

"Good!" a certain type of environmentalist might say. 

But other people may notice that the country's whole political economy assumes population growth. Whether retirements are funded through government or private accounts, the United States still needs enough productive workers to support retirees without impoverishing themselves; no matter how the health-care system is structured, it still must be funded and staffed by the able-bodied.

With a shrinking population, even seemingly unrelated areas, such as debt finance, will need rethinking. Debt implicitly assumes growing incomes, growing gross domestic product. But GDP growth is a direct function of the labor force's size. Without that growth, debts bite harder with every passing year.

Societies preparing for an aging population ought to be running surpluses to pay down debt and planning for much longer working lives. But almost no one seems ready to do that. Instead, three alternatives are generally proposed: raising birthrates through family subsidies; boosting innovation to offset workforce decline with higher productivity; and replenishing the population through immigration.
Unfortunately, there's little evidence that "family policy" has more than a marginal impact on total lifetime fertility. Sociologist Brad Wilcox, who oversees the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, notes that even "krybbe"-to-"grav" Nordic welfare states have failed to keep birthrates above replacement. And while technological innovation can certainly make the most of existing workers, it's unlikely to fully offset workforce decline. After a certain point, aging populations tend to innovate less, because older people are generally more risk-averse and less creative than younger ones.

That leaves immigration. Even the hardiest of immigration hard-liners might reconsider their position if the alternative were working to age 90. But the exigencies of an aging population are likely to force immigration advocates to do some rethinking, too. The idea that Social Security and Medicare can be saved by importing younger workers turns out to have some complications.

First-generation migrants typically cost the government somewhat more than they pay in taxes. That doesn't mean that migration is a bad deal for the United States, despite what restrictionists claim. 

By providing low-skill, labor-intensive services, migrants let native-born Americans spend more time on more productive work, boosting everyone's incomes.

But when native-born, higher-skill workers become scarcer, the equation changes. To put it another way: You can't save Social Security's finances by replacing an engineer who makes $100,000 a year with someone who had to drop out of school in eighth grade and is struggling to learn English. 

The way that system is structured, the math doesn't work. This limits our ability to close budget gaps through immigration.

An immigration solution to the United States' demographic challenge would probably mean a very different immigration policy, something like the points system used by countries such as Canada and Australia, which selects for migrants reasonably fluent in English and likely to be net tax contributors. Family reunification, which reinforces the United States' historical bias in favor of low-skill migration, might well have to be curtailed.

That change would be politically fraught, to say the least. And given that the United States, unlike Canada and Australia, has a long border with a significantly poorer country, it may not even be possible. Moreover, most of the countries that send migrants to the rest of the world themselves have declining birthrates. Scouring countries in demographic decline clean of their working-age populations to feed rich-world economies seems both unethical and impractical.

The good news is that demographic crises move at a glacial pace; we have years to weigh these unpalatable options. But, like glaciers, demographic crises are nearly impossible to stop once they really get going. So unless births bounce back soon, we'll probably have to choose.