At Least He Tells the Truth - The Blake Ashby Podcast

Pretty much every conversation about Medicare for All starts with a tiny fib.  That tiny fib is the name, Medicare for All.  The Medicare for All Act does NOT propose Medicare for all.  What is being proposed by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is actually Medicaid for all.   Any way you slice it, we have a healthcare proposal that has very little in common with Medicare, but everything in common with Medicaid, and yet its backers call it Medicare for all instead of Medicaid for all. Why would the Medicare for All crowd purposely mislabel their plan?  Because if Progressive are honest about what they are proposing, it will have even less support.  So instead of being truthful, Progressives chose a misleading name.  They chose to tell a tiny fib. This is, unfortunately, kind of a recurring theme of the modern progressive movement.  They feel entirely comfortable telling tiny little fibs to get people to support their positions.  To get people to support policies that the progressives feel are good for them.  Maybe it's just me, but it feels like progressives are willing to lie to me, for my own good.  As if I couldn't figure out what was good for me if they actually told me the truth.

I've got some really smart friends that still insist Biden won the election because of voting fraud.  You might have some friends like that, too.  I know it's hard not to jump right to outrage, to ask them how someone as smart as they could believe something so untrue.  Fight the temptation.  Instead, engage them on the subject.  Ask them how many votes they believe were cast fraudulently.  Go through the different kinds of voting fraud.  Ask them which kind of fraud happened.  They probably won't have an answer for you, but they will appreciate that you didn't jump right to the name calling.  And who knows, maybe go a step further.  There is a factual truth and an emotional truth to most situations.  For many Trump voters, the emotional truth is that the System ganged up against Trump to ensure he wasn't reelected.  Acknowledge that there is some truth to that, even if there was no actual fraud.  Your friendship will probably be better for it.  Our democracy certainly will be.  

I pray two or three times a day, and if I'm having a great day, even more - I say little prayers of gratitude throughout the day. Sometimes I think this catches people by surprise.  Most people think of me, I hope, as kind of a hard nosed numbers and rationality guy.  But rationality and prayer aren't contradictory.  They just cover two different parts of the human experience – the knowable and the unknowable.  For all that we know, for all that we can know, there will always be a part that is unknowable.  We might answer the What, but here on earth we can never truly answer the Why.  Why?  Why are we here?  Why does what we do matter?  We can't know Why.  We just have to believe. People ask me how I'm able to do what I do, how I can keep multiple long term projects moving forward.  Prayer is a big part of it.

I have to say, I never thought I would be defending the honor of Bill Barr, because I don't agree with him on a broad range of issues.  But he is one of those people who's integrity I wouldn't question – like Josh Bolton, I just couldn't imagine he would put his principles aside in service of Donald Trump.  Sometimes there is this tendency on the part of people that truly hate Trump to look for the worst possible interpretation of his actions, and the ACTIONS of the people in his administration.  To assume that every person that served in the Trump administration had to be a spineless toadie with no self-respect.   To be fair, spineless toadies are part of every administration – it's just part of how politics works.  But Bill Barr isn't on that list.  He didn't join the administration because he bought into the mystic of Donald Trump.  He joined the Administration because he has a certain view of the powers of the presidency, and a belief that we have undermined the power of the President...

it's been a great month for democracy.  Not because Joe Biden won, although I am happy about that.  It's been a great month for democracy because the citizens of the United States of America proved yet again that we recognize, and cherish, this beautiful system of government we have built.  We cherish the right of every American – every American – to participate in the process of choosing our leaders.   Sometimes its possible to wonder if our democracy has gotten old and tired, or we have gotten tired of doing the things we need to do to maintain it. To wonder if our institutions are failing us, or possibly that we have failed them, if we've become complacent about protecting our democracy against dictatorships that want to tear us down.  Sometimes it's possible to wonder if the modern world is just too overwhelming for something as civil as democracy to survive.  Sometimes it's just possible to wonder about the future of the United States, and this grand experiment we are part of. But not this month.  This is one of those months that reaffirms our faith in our Constitution, our system of laws.  That reaffirms our faith in our democracy.  161 million Americans proved yet again just how much they value our rights.  Their rights.  Our institutions, for all of the questions and concerns, made those 161 million votes possible with a smooth, well-run election.  This was one of our most secure elections ever.   And for all of the anger, for all of the intensity, democracy worked yet again.   We should all feel a little better about our country.  We should all feel a little better about our fellow citizens, even those on the other side, that kept our grand experiment going.  God Bless America.

For somebody who is generally middle of the road and moderate, it's been really hard to be on social media recently.   I have friends across the political spectrum.  Intellectually, I understand why some of my friends supported Bernie Sanders, though I don't agree.  Intellectually, I understand why some of my friends are supporting Trump, though I don't agree.  But what's hard is when friends on either side say things that make me think they have put their rationality and skepticism into a box until after the election is over.   I have smart friends on the left that insist that the protest movement doesn't dehumanize cops.  And I have smart friends on the right that insist that hydroxychloroquine really works. I'm not even sure what to say anymore.   How could anyone possibly argue that the protest movement isn't dehumanizing cops?  ACAB stands for “All Cops are Bastards”. And how could anyone defend hydroxychloroquine as a viable treatment?  It started as a lie, a bald faced lie, completely made up, with no basis in reality.   So its really hard to be on social media right now.  People on the right furiously attack anything that points to Trump's incompetence.  People on the left furiously attack anything that seems to question their movement.  And those of us in the middle can't wait for the madness to pass so we can get back to having conversations instead of shouting matches. 

Accusing all Trump voters of being terrible people is counter to our democratic norms.  Yes, democratic norms require that we afford Trump voters the same respect that we extend to all voters.  We do not demonize the other side.     I am sometimes stunned by the amount of anger directed at Trump voters.  By the regularity with which Trump voters are demonized and accused of being either consciously evil, racist people or too stupid to understand just how evil and destructive Trump is.  Personally, I didn't vote for Trump the first time, and he has been far worse than I ever allowed myself to imagine. I am voting for Biden.  And yes, I do believe Trump is undermining our Constitution, and for me, that makes this election a moral issue.  Defeating Trump is a moral issue.  But that doesn't make the people voting for Trump immoral.  It just means that they place weight on a different set of concerns.   Undoubtedly I will have a few people accuse me of “normalizing” Trump with this podcast. That by noting some of the reasons why some people are voting for Trump, I am making it easier for others to justify voting for him.  But that's missing the point.  We don't apply democratic norms just when it serves our goals.  They are only norms when they are applied to everyone, every time, whether we agree with the person or not.   And strangely enough, accusing someone of being either evil or stupid isn't actually a good way to get them to change their minds.  I can argue that it's the people spewing hate at Trump voters that are actually doing more to help him get reelected.  Acknowledging the reasons why someone might vote for Trump actually makes it easier to have a real conversation about the election, and who knows, maybe change some minds.  

The Trump Administration's response to the pandemic has been a tapestry of incompetence.  Trump has gotten most things wrong, and even the few things the administration has gotten right, it has usually them undermined them.  Even the one big thing the President got right, the restrictions on travel from China, he then turned around and undermined.    I cannot remember a Republican administration more against providing even the most basic data on government.  And surely the reason is that by almost any quantifiable measure, this administration has done a poor job, even before its response to the pandemic.  And again, on the pandemic, by just about any available number, this president has botched almost every decision he has made.  I'll say it again - he really has created a tapestry of incompetence.   

The Supreme Court did our country a favor today by effectively pushing off release of Trump's tax returns until after the election. I know that the people that hate Trump were hoping to have his tax returns released before the election, assuming they would reveal something that could be used against him in the campaign.  I have to say, I'm glad they won't be released until after the election.  I absolutely agree that Congress has a right to review Trump's tax returns, and I agree with the State of New York, that the President is not above the law.  But releasing his tax returns won't help to get him defeated, and yes, how the Democrats handle it could actually help get him re-elected.  I want this election to be a referendum on how Trump has done as president, because that's what we need. Anything that takes focus away from that, from the job he has done over the last three years, does him a favor. And as strange as this might sound, if the Democrats pile on enough, at some point people start believing Trump is being treated unfairly.  So again, the Supreme Court did our country a favor.   

God Blessed America.  The blessing wasn't this great, beautiful land of ours.  The blessing was an idea, a belief that is captured in our Declaration of Independence.  Our Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, states: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. By no means has the United States achieved equality for all segments of our population. It took years of change in societal thinking and legislation to start leveling the playing field. But this idea, this belief in equality, has been the beacon that guided our country and our policies. I know there are many people that are worried about the future of America. I am not. Yes, we have challenges to overcome. Every generation has challenges to overcome. But we will overcome them. Because what was true in 1776 is still true today: All men and women are created equal. We will prevail because God has Blessed the United States of America.

If you don't know what happened, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson read the names and streets or addresses of several protesters on a Facebook Live broadcast and the protest community had a meltdown and is demanding that Krewson resign. Krewson has apologized and the video has been removed. If I had to guess, Krewson probably thought she was doing something nice for the protesters by noting their names, and that they were city residents. Now, I have to agree with the protesters on some levels. Having my street address read on any kind of public broadcast would be unsettling.  And at a deeper level, I believe that there should be a line between people's private lives and their public lives.  But part of what made me chuckle was how the protesters characterized what Krewson did.  Instead of saying it was a mistake, they suggested she released their names as a means of threatening and intimidating them.  Somehow the protesters have convinced themselves that they are such a threat to the Man that now the Man is hunting them down, and Krewson is helping with the process.  It's worth noting that the mythology that the protesters have created for themselves also justifies an amazing amount of hypocrisy.  At least a part of the protesters feel like they aren't held to the same laws and standards as everyone else.  As revolutionaries, they weren't bound by the laws or conventions of the system they were trying to overthrow.   And that hypocrisy was on display yet again with how the protesters responded to Krewson's actions.  How did they show their disappointment at Krewson breaching the line between public and private?  Did they protest at the Mayor's office, her public address?  No, they protested at Krewson's private residence, her home.  Yes, you heard me right.. My wife and I have watched the madness of the protest movement for almost six years.  And you just have to laugh at parts of it.  The self-aggrandizement.  The self-righteousness.  And the protester's amazing ability to not see the hypocrisy of their actions.

The truth is, African American parents do have reason to be more afraid when their children interact with the police. I know, I know, not a shocker, but something we need to say out loud once in a while to make sure everybody remembers. I believe that our conversation around policing has become distorted and in many ways has painted an unfair portrait of cops.  However the fear of police interactions that African American parents and their children feel has a basis in fact, and our conversation must acknowledge that reality or we will have a hard time making progress on policing.  As much progress as our society has made, there are still police officers that have different opinions of African Americans and Caucasians. With that difference of opinion as a starting point, it is possible for an officer to interpret the actions of an African American teenager based in part on the officer's attitude towards African Americans. It is possible for an African American kid stopped by the police to behave perfectly and still have his or her actions interpreted as some kind of disrespect by the police officer. And if an African American kid who acts perfectly can have a bad outcome with the police, then it's even more true of an African American kid who acts like a teenager. And that's what's so terrifying to African American parents.  Because it means that no matter how good of a job they do in raising their children, no matter how polite and respectful they teach their children to be, if their child is stopped by a cop who distrusts African Americans their child is still at risk.

The truth is, policing is a really hard profession, and it seems like we lose sight of that. It seems like we label every bad outcome as proof of bad intentions on the part of the police, and that's just not true. It's just not true. What happened a week ago in Buffalo is a reminder of just how hard it is to be a police officer.  An officer made a judgement call on how to handle a protester, a 75 year old white man.  The officer's judgement call resulted in the man suffering a traumatic head injury.  The social justice protests of the last five years have undoubtedly made policing better, but have also made it far more complex. The officer was immediately accused of purposely harming the old protester, of being a terrible human being.  Who knows, maybe he is.  But maybe he's not a monster.  Maybe he became a cop because he wanted to help make things better, to serve and protect.  Maybe he is a good human being doing the best he can at a really hard job – a job that most of us don't want to do.   We should give police officers our thanks for stepping up to serve our society.  And when an officer makes a judgement call that results in harm, we need to remember that they are human beings doing the best they can in a very hard situation. 

I lost another Liberal friend recently. I don't know for sure why he stopped returning calls and emails and disappeared on social media. However experience suggests it's probably something I said about President Trump. It's not that I'm a Trump fan.  A longtime Republican, I voted for Clinton.  Since taking office Trump has confirmed just about every reason I had for not voting for him. But I'm also not a Trump hater.  I don't question that he loves our country, or that he is doing what he thinks is best for America.  I also think that Trump has, in some areas, transformed our political debate for the good.  There was a time when it was possible, even desirable, to have civil conversations with people holding different political views. I have no doubt that Trump has undermined our democratic norms. But sometimes it's hard not to think the Left is at fault, too, in how they react to Trump and his supporters (or even people that just don't hate him). Because they are only democratic norms if they apply for everybody in our democracy, even the people with whom we disagree. Yes, my Liberal ex-friends, even for President Donald Trump and his supporters.

President Trump does not respect the US military, or the special role it plays in our country. West Point is the school where Army officers are trained.  The Army had called off the West Point public graduation ceremony, deciding it was not worth the risk to the graduating cadets.  President Donald Trump overrode the decision of his military, of the chain of command, to order West Point to hold a graduation ceremony just so he could give a speech.  I am not a Trump fan, and I did not vote for him.  But I worried less about his presidency that many of my more liberal friends.  While I knew he would batter our institutions, I was confident that they would be strong enough to withstand it.  I also actually believed Trump would realize that being reelected was dependent on being the leader of the whole country, not just those who voted for him the first time.  And finally, I thought that Trump understood and respected the special role of the military, that they were the defender of our nation, not the political prospects of any given elected leader. I was very wrong, on pretty much every point. Trump has no special respect for the military. He views it as some combination of a prop for his daily pageant of ego and a part of the Deep State intent on thwarting his will. I hope those many voters that respect and value our military understand the damage he is doing.

Attention has been rightly focused on the death of George Floyd. But this has taken attention away from what happened in New York's Central Park a few weeks ago, when a White woman threatened to call the police on an African American bird watcher. A few weekends ago an African American bird watcher requested a White woman comply with the law and leash her dog.  Instead of doing so she threatened to call the police on the bird watcher and report that a Black man was threatening her life. She eventually called 911, making it seem as if she was actively being attacked.  What happened in Central Park isn't as dramatic as watching someone being slowly killed.  But in many ways its more insidious and yes, dangerous.  The police can only respond to the information they are provided.  One way to reduce police violence is to reduce the racism at the start of the process.  And that means prosecuting those people who lie on 911 calls.

It's been a rough week for our country, beginning with the death of George Floyd. But it's been a really rough month for African Americans.  The events of May have rightfully infuriated African Americans and our civil rights community. In mid May a video showing the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of two private citizens was released. In late May the video of a woman threatening to call the police on an African American bird watcher was released. And then a week later, George Floyd was killed, his slow death videotaped while the officer ignored his pleas. Unfortunately that is practically a catalog of the problems that African Americans have historically had with law enforcement in our country.   Any one of these events would have been sad. But to have them all happen within a month was tragically depressing, proof of how far we still have to go remove the vestiges of slavery and racism. How far we still have to go to ensure African Americans have equal rights and equal protections in our country.  

China is in the process of stripping democracy away from Hong Kong. I have to ask - do the leaders of China believe their people are too stupid to choose their own government? That's harsh wording, but also pretty much what it comes down to. The leaders of China have made the determination that most Chinese citizens aren't able to know what is best for themselves. That the average Chinese man or woman isn't smart enough to democratically help select their own leaders and their own government. They are better off letting the smarter people, the Chinese Communist Party members, make the decisions for them. The Chinese leaders are on the wrong side of history. What the Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence two centuries ago is still as true today – all men and women are created equal. Even the citizens of China.

Elizabeth Warren, one of the proponents of Medicare for All, has started talking about fixing Obamacare instead of tearing it out by the root and starting over again. And that's a good thing for the Democratic Party and our country. I know that the Medicare for All supporters have nothing but the best intentions, and I know that a government monopoly on healthcare has certain advantages. But promising Medicare as that monopoly healthcare system is not realistic, and it's border line misleading – it's a promise that isn't connected to the reality of modern healthcare. Medicare's cost management strategies are based on the fact that every Medicare recipient is near the end of life. Medicare has no strategies in place for managing the beginning of life, or the middle of life. It has no reason to.  We do have a government health plan for people that aren't seniors. It's called Medicaid. So if we do move to a national healthcare plan, do you really think it's going to be Medicare, literally the most expensive healthcare coverage in the world? Or do you think it's going to be the least expensive we have, Medicaid, that's actually set up for people that aren't seniors?

SURELY one of the strangest trends in today's world is the growing fascination with Socialism, or maybe more accurately the word Socialism. A prominent progressive and Bernie supporter, Ryan Knight, just made a big splash about changing his twitter handle from @proudprogressive to @proudsocialist. But I am not altogether sure if Ryan, or any of the people using the word “Socialism” actually understand what it means. And CLEARLY they don't understand it's many, many intellectual flaws. So as a public service, I'm going to talk about some of the different intellectual flaws of socialism. The first intellectual flaw is the belief that ending private ownership of the means of production ends greed.  It doesn't.  It just closes off one channel, and causes that greed to flow through a different channel.  Factory managers under socialism are just as greedy as factory managers under capitalism - they just lie about it.

In a previous podcast, I talked about the four hard healthcare questions that we avoid. In this podcast I am going to talk about private insurance, and specifically how the Medicare for All crowd comes close to telling bald-faced lies about private insurance to justify the need for Medicare for All. So here are the four big lies or misstatements about private health insurance: 1. That insurance companies are driving up healthcare costs 2. That health insurers have excessive, unnecessary bureaucracy that helps drive up costs 3. That health insurers deny claims to protect their profits 4. That it's the insurance company's money None of these statements are true. I understand that insurance companies make an easy target to blame for costs and lack of coverage. But the insurance companies are the least responsible for the significant increase in the cost of care over the past four decades. Instead the increase primarily comes down to two factors: technology and utilization. The hardest truth in healthcare is that we can't afford to spend an unlimited amount of money to save any one person. We just can't. At some point, we have to stop paying the healthcare costs to keep a person alive. No amount of fantasizing or demonizing insurance companies is going to change this. And until we stop demonizing insurance companies, we aren't going to have the conversation on healthcare that we need.

I just am baffled that Trump so hates the FBI, and even more baffled that the President is convincing long time law and order conservatives to hate the FBI along with him. What is going on with the conservative movement? What is going on with Hugh Hewitt? The President should be thanking the FBI, and yes, Mueller. Because without the Mueller Report, the cloud of collusion would have hung over his administration forever. I'm sorry, but it's just completely irrational that the President hates the FBI. They did their job, collected the information and answered the questions. And the answer confirmed what the President had said.  It really seems as if the President has turned hatred of the FBI into some kind of loyalty test. Maybe it's just my perception but he seems like he is encouraging, even demanding, that conservatives have the same hatred of the FBI that he does. And again, I'm sorry, that's just completely irrational. And now the President's loyalty test extends to the prosecution of General Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI.

This podcast isn't about religion or faith, however religion and faith do figure into the questions facing our country. And my personal faith is part of the foundation of everything I write.  Sometimes people seem to expect that I don't believe in God, as if atheism was the natural state for an analytical mind.  Certainly true, believing in God is a leap of faith. But so is believing your life has a purpose.  Pretty much all of us make a leap of faith, pretty much all of us believe, whether we are conscious of it or not.  We all have a religion, whether we choose to call it that or not.   I know some people think believing in God is a form of intellectual laziness.  I view it as a form of intellectual honesty, of not pretending that one's leap of faith is something other than faith. Not to suggest that being a believer in God is easy, but at least for me it's far, far easier than trying to intellectualize a structure to support my belief that my life has meaning.  I can't describe how comforting it is for me to just believe - to believe there is a God and through God I find my purpose.  I can't describe how empowering it is to believe that I am part of God's plan.

This might be the most honesty you have ever heard about healthcare in one place.  Mind, you, that's a really low bar.  Unfortunately our conversation on healthcare is not characterized by a high degree of honesty at the moment.  Instead we get shadings of the truth and ducking of the hard questions.  Everybody does it, but at this moment in time it's the Medicare for All people that are doing it the most, that have the most tenuous connection with the truth.  But we will have to face the hard truth and answer these hard questions if we are ever going to fix our healthcare system. The hardest truth in healthcare is that we can't afford to spend an unlimited amount of money to save any one person.  We just can't.    Starting from that hard truth, we have four really hard questions: 1 How much money do we spend to keep any one person alive? 2 Do we spend the same amount for everyone, or different amounts for different individuals? 3 Does the amount we spend on a person depend on how responsible that person is? 4 And finally, Are the death committees run by the government or by private insurance companies? No amount of magical thinking by the Medicare for All crowd will make these questions go away..

President Trump will certainly have his accomplishments. But he is also doing damage to our national institutions, including the FBI. Trump just called the FBI agents that interviewed General Flynn “Dirty, filthy cops”. The president of the United States of America is calling our country's leading law enforcement agency “dirty, filthy cops”. And conservatives now echo his attacks.  Conservatives are calling the FBI a corrupt organization that, through its actions, has lost the confidence of the people of the United States. Somehow President Trump has gotten conservatives to question the patriotism of the FBI.

It's just amazing that Republicans' heads aren't exploding right now. I'm not some Trump hater. I don't think he's some Russian plant sent to destroy our way of life. But I do think he is an intellectual train wreck, who can barely look beyond the next news cycle. And as a result, almost everything the Republican Party has held as sacred, this President in destroying.

I'm not a Trump fan or voter, but sometimes I think the people that hate Trump, are so anxious to present him as wicked that they purposely distort or misunderstand what he says. An example was when Trump was talking about his China policy late last year and said “I am the Chosen One”. He was immediately accused of comparing himself to Jesus. Trump wasn't comparing himself to Jesus. He was just noting the role that he was playing in our history, and he was right - he is an agent of change.  

It's a rough time for our country, but everything is going to be okay. We will contain the coronavirus. We will get through the recession and then our economy will start growing again, just like it always has. Life will go on – the life we had before will go on. The coronavirus wasn't a failure of our system of protections; it was a failure of our leadership. No future president will ever again make the mistake of ignoring a pandemic. We will get back to the old normal.

It's not that the conversation between left and the right are dishonest. It's more that they are less honest, leaving off a little part of the truth, because it hurts their positions, or is too harsh for the voting public. And those little, unspoken parts of the truth, and the questions they bring up, are what's tearing our country apart. The podcast purpose of this podcast is to speak that unspoken part of the truth, to bring up the hard questions that we are avoiding.