who to trust

photo from our Arizona home with unusual morning cloud pattern

 After writing about the State of the Union address, I came across things I had written (years ago but that's the beauty-- or not-- of blogging). What I had written in 2009, makes it sound as though I have changed my mind on my political thinking regarding issues today. I do not believe I have. What has changed is my belief on who can fix what I think is wrong. 

I had planned to make this blog about my writing; but it seems that this is more important. What did I want to see done then versus what I want to see today. I have lost all faith in either party solving things-- and worse, now I distrust most of the agencies on which we depend. That means leadership, not the boots on the ground but those who rose to the top to run things.

My real question now is-- who can we trust? I think this is a worldwide problem and not just for the United States (not so united these days). A recent example regards the recent downing of four unidentified objects, which were balloons or were they? We were told the first, a spy balloon from China, was downed over shallow ocean-- turns out not so much as they didn't have all of it retrieved, when I wrote this blog. First, they said they saw it over Alaska... Now, we learn they followed it from its launch site in China... or did they? See the problem and it grows with the next three that are balloons, or were they? And have they retrieved them? Not any word that I know of. Were they from aliens? They weren't sure, then they were. Most of us figured they were from this world; but they, whoever they are, weren't sure, but now are-- or are they?.

The President said he didn't want to talk about it as it'd lead to panic. Really, he didn't figure people already understood this was an unknown situation. Now I read he might give a speech, but who will write it for him and will it tell us anything more than how great he is?

There is another thing out there, regarding this...Who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline? Russia, unknown, or did the current administration do it? Who can we trust to tell us?

When I wrote in 2009 that I liked the idea of dealing with health care, so people were not bankrupted by unexpected illnesses (insurance or not), I hoped there was a realistic plan to do this. It turned out not so much. People get hit by disastrous health issues, and there is no current answers. Who profited from the 'plan'; so far as I can tell-- big corporations.

I see the problem with a neighbor here where she is trying to treat her husband, who had a stroke, at home where it's wearing her out. What is her choice given what care facilities cost? Prescriptions are pretty well helped by Medicare and supplemental insurance, but what about everybody else where the prices continually escalate. An example is a test for Covid. I could get one free (on Medicare), haven't ever needed one; but our family has to pay $8 per test, which when it's a family and you need at least two each incident-- positive and then negative-- adds up fast.

Who can we trust? That's what I want to know today as it is certainly neither partisan party for me, where each have their own agendas that are not mine. Worse though are all the agencies, where nobody votes these people in, and they control a lot of regulations where we have a Congress that does nothing that isn't suiting their partisan agendas. The ordinary people??? It seems they have decided that we are too stupid for them to care what we want!

That's what has changed for me-- who should I trust? It's sure not most media, where it should be if we had reasonable journalism. Scare talk maybe, but I think it's unfortunately where we are and most countries probably suffer the same problems-- even when they are not totalitarian controlled. I want, at the least, a media that actually researches and tells us what they learn-- not what they want us to believe or what they are told they should say.

Hopefully next blog will be more upbeat. Although since it's on marketing books, maybe not lol

Update: I debated where to put my additional thoughts regarding health care-- in comments or here. You can see which won out and virtually became another blog (but I already wrote the one for Saturday).

There are two ways to approach issues where costs are growing too fast-- like health care. One is you try to bring costs down by looking at why so high. For instance with prescription drugs, is it real cost of new development (claims by corporate interests), or greed with wanting higher returns or making the stock market happy. It could even be all the advertising (didn't used to be legal to do) to get patients to want this or that prescription drug instead of letting doctors make the decisions. That advertising is not cheap and might even have someone asking for a more expensive drug when a cheaper one would have done the job-- or when they didn't actually need that one but it has some side benefit they want (recently with a very popularly advertised drug that also causes weight loss).

Looking at why costs rose in so many areas might give clues as to what could be done-- true in rapidly increasing costs of higher education where we could look at the kinds of buildings they claim to need, which might be not simple, safe structures, but more elaborate ones oriented to make the university look more Ivy League. Is it too many aides, high incomes given to only occasional professors (like one class instead of full work loads) for their name prestige? That's not the approach right now, which is more government loans (given at high rate of interest) to keep the students and no concern for why tuition has been growing faster than the cost of living. 

Same is true with many things-- an unwillingness to look at the reasons but instead find more government the answer. We can agree there is a problem-- easy to see sometimes; but what do we see as the answers-- corporate and even individual responsibility or government being the sugar daddy. This is not true of all things, but it's where we should look

This even applies to the recent train derailments. It's the fault of not enough government regulations according to one group. How about instead it's the fault of corporate interests who declare short term profits more important than wise infrastructure updates? Do we have to be forced to do what is right or should we look to responsibility as a big factor?