Given that many golf tour professionals make millions each year, it’s hard to grasp that they could be underpaid. But relative to the extraordinary growth of compensation contracts in other pro sports, PGA golfers have for the most part been left behind.
Last (full) year, Jon Rahm was the leading money earner on the PGA Tour (not including the FedEx Cup) with $7.7 million in winnings. He was top dog among the best golfers on the planet. As much as this amount is, it paled in comparison to what professional athletes make in other sports.
According to Spotrac, there were 150 National Basketball Association players, 170 Major League Baseball players and 254 National Football League athletes who made more than Rahm.
(This tribute was originally posted in June 2021 and will be republished every Father’s Day as long as I’m alive.)
The root cause for virtually every cultural problem in the United States is the number of children growing up without fathers in their homes.
This is not the case within my own family. I am fortunate to have four sons (two sons, Mike and Matt and two sons-in-law, Dustin and Patrick) who are loving and dedicated fathers to their children. My grandchildren are all very young, very blessed and just assume that having dad at home is the way it is with kids everywhere. We know it is not.
This Sunday is the nation’s 113th celebration of the value of fathers. My effort here is to personalize this day by publicly thanking these men who are raising my grandchildren to let them know how valuable they and fathers like them are in the lives of their kids, their wives and society at large.
On January 6, 2021 an out-of-control group of (mostly, but not all) supporters of President Trump “stormed the Capitol” building in Washington, D.C. And though Democrats and the media falsely claimed that a Capitol police officer was mercilessly bludgeoned to death, only one person died that day on the Capitol grounds as a result of a homicide — 14-year Air Force veteran, Ashli Babbitt. There has been virtually no outrage over the shooting death of this 5’2″ 110 pound, unarmed woman by a U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) lieutenant.
For the last six months, the name of the USCP officer who shot Babbitt has been unknown except to Congressional leadership, law enforcement and some in the media. New information has surfaced within the last few weeks regarding the (public) identity of her killer which still remains formally withheld by the USCP.
Paul Sperry of Real Clear Investigations has recently publicized the name of the officer who fired the fatal shot. This article will say who he likely, not confirmed, is but mostly focus on what transpired at the scene in the seconds leading up to her unjust death along with inconsistencies in the shooter’s story.
Ashli Babbitt was the victim of a personally fatal decision to raid the Capitol, extremely poor judgement on the part of the shooter, poor communication within the USCP and very unlucky timing.
Some of the many questions that need answers: Was the lethal action legally justified or was it pure negligence? Did the officer who shot Babbitt follow training protocols or did he act improperly and impulsively?
One fact will be made very clear. Though some USCP officers were clearly wired for inter-organization communication, an astonishing lack of coordination between the shooter and other officers within just a few feet of Babbitt contributed enormously to her death.
And finally, one major question cannot be ignored. Given our highly politicized and now “racialized” culture that permeates every aspect of society since the murder of George Floyd, was there a racial component to prosecutors’ decision not to criminally charge the officer?
The root cause for virtually every cultural problem in the United States is the number of children growing up without fathers in their homes.
This is not the case within my own family. I am fortunate to have four sons (two sons, Mike and Matt and two sons-in-law, Dustin and Patrick) who are loving and dedicated fathers to their children. My grandchildren are all very young, very blessed and just assume that having dad at home is the way it is with kids everywhere. We know it is not.
This Sunday is the nation’s 112th celebration of the value of fathers. My effort here is to personalize this day by publicly thanking these men who are raising my grandchildren to let them know how valuable they and fathers like them are in the lives of their kids, their wives and society at large.
Former Obama chief of staff and Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel famously said in 2008: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. …it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.”
Well, outside of war, America has had few national crises worse than this COVID-19 pandemic. And unfortunately, few have provided a greater opportunity for those who crave power to vastly expand it.
The pandemic has now resulted in the deaths of over 500,000 Americans and economically impacted nearly every family and small business. As bad as this has been, there is another enormous issue for the American people: The failure of those we rely on and entrust to prevent such catastrophes — or at least mitigate their damage. And perhaps even more alarming is the possibility that this failure is not due to incompetence — but intent.
I believe this saga to be one of the greatest medical scandals in American history. Perhaps like the New York state nursing home scandal, this saga will eventually receive the national media attention it deserves but until then it remains largely ignored.
According to a Rasmussen poll conducted November 17-18, 47% of all voters or 73 million Americans (155 million votes counted so far) believe the November 3rd presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
This total includes 70% of Republicans who don’t believe it was a “free and fair election” and a stunning 30% of Democrats.
Many of us have been paying close attention to the attempts by Trump’s legal team to fight the “official” results in the courts. We believe Democrats fraudulently produced enough Biden votes (or eliminated Trump votes) in just a handful of counties in key battleground states to give those states and their electoral votes to the Democrat.
We know fraud occurred. There are now literally hundreds of evidential eyewitness testimonies and sworn affidavits showing illegal votes were cast and/or votes fraudulently tallied.
What I don’t know is — was that corruption widespread enough to flip the election to Trump.
I can only speak for myself so I’ll try to present the case why I have seen enough anecdotal or circumstantial evidence up to this point to conclude that — until I see information to the contrary — the presidential election was stolen from an incumbent president and that we are witnessing a (so far) bloodless coup.
I wrote this essay that was originally published by the American Thinker on September 14, 2014, the 200th anniversary of Francis Scott Key’s writing of the Star Spangled Banner.
Given that Vice-President Pence gave his Republican VP nomination acceptance speech at Fort McHenry last evening, the site of the famed battle with the British Navy in Baltimore Harbor late in the War of 1812, I thought I’d re-publish the article and the story behind Key’s inspired poem.
* * *
Two hundred years, on September 14th, it was the unlikely convergence of a physician and a lawyer that produced the most recited poem in American history. Its inspiration occurred just a few miles from Fort McHenry, located in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, the site of one of our nation’s most important military conflicts.
One of the earliest alerts that the COVID-19 virus was not the death sentence that most scientists in the mainstream made it out to be was by Stanford School of Medicine professor, Dr. John Ioannidis. He is ranked by Google Scholar as “one of the world’s 100 most-cited scientists” and is the publisher of more than a thousand studies.
Dr. Ioannidis looked at one of the first places of known infection, the Diamond Princess cruise ship, that was quarantined by Japanese officials on February 4. 700 passengers and crew were infected and 9 died.
By examining the demographic make-up of those infected on-board, Dr. Ioannidis concluded that the fatality rate in the U.S. would be nowhere near the early predictions of one to two million deaths. He thought at worst it would be comparable to annual influenza deaths.
(FINAL of a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)
The core belief of the Medicare for All advocates is that only a government-run, bureaucratic “Deep State” can solve the problems with medical care in America.
These socialists (after all, they are advocating adoption of one of the most socialized systems in the world) can’t even fathom that it is the unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy, and more recently the unaffordable Affordable Care Act, that have further damaged an already flawed medical payment system.
One only has to look at the Veterans Affairs (VA) system to get a glimpse of how national, government-run health care would (not) function. This authentic single-payer system has let our veterans down for years. A VA investigation in 2016 found that over 100 vets died just in Los Angeles County alone over a 9-month period while awaiting treatment. And this despite a $15 billion reform package that passed in 2014 supposedly to clean things up.
It is essential to recognized that even with all of our payment or insurance issues, actual medical care in America is second to none.
(Sixth in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)
Few Americans are satisfied with the current health care system. But actual medical care in America is not the problem, it’s second to none. What needs fixing is how we pay for it.
The health care payment system in the United States is clearly in need of major reform. Our challenge as a prosperous society is to compassionately provide necessary medical care to those who have difficulty affording it but also to ethically relieve those now burdened with the cost of care of others through considerably higher medical bills or insurance premiums.
One of out of every five Americans don’t pay anything for their care – but somebody does. Doctors and nurses don’t work for free. The people who pay for this care are the “neighbors” of those who got it free or subsidized. What makes this so unethical is that those “neighbors” who end up paying more than what they legitimately owe are mostly being charged extra without their knowledge.
When people don’t pay the cost of a service or product, they want all of it they can get. It’s not a criticism of them, it’s simply human nature. Demand skyrockets when something desirable is free. I’ve had ER physicians tell me they’ve often seen the same people, on Medicaid or without any insurance at all, show up in ER routinely for the most minor of injuries or ailments. Everyone should pay something even if its nominal. It would discourage frivolous use.
The better solution is to move toward a market-oriented system that still benevolently provides care for the truly needy but doesn’t allow others to abuse the system by showing up in ER every two weeks with the sniffles.
(Fifth in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)
If the Democrats win the House on Tuesday, the first bill they may pass is “Medicare for All” since it already has over 120 co-sponsors. These now admitted socialists would destroy the world’s greatest health care system due to their arrogance and addiction to political power.
Nearly all previous socialist efforts to destroy the free market have started with the same premise: The current system is so bad, so troubling that government must step in to take remedial action by imposing itself into the marketplace. Phrases like “single-payer,” “universal health care” or the current favorite, “Medicare for All,” are attractive marketing phrases designed to promote expanded government power. In reality, “restricted health care,” “shared shortages,” or “inaccessible care” would be more accurate when describing such concepts.
To socialists, the free market can’t be trusted because it’s just not fair the way it uses merit to produce winners and losers. It’s why government and academia are so closely ideologically aligned. Many have never worked one day of their lives dealing with free market competition. They just know they’re smarter and have better ideas better than those less intelligent simpletons who are out there actually doing the work.
(Fourth in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)
First of all, it must be stated: Everyone in the United States has access to quality medical care regardless of ability to pay in America’s great hospitals.
It is a misconception, and a common cry with the “Medicare for All” crowd that that because many in America don’t have health insurance, they aren’t able to receive medical care. As virtually any Emergency Room physician or nurse will convey, that isn’t true. In most cases, hospitals would treat these uninsured patients anyway, but they must do so because of federal law.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) was passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It states that all hospitals under the CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) system, must examine and treat essentially anyone who walks into the waiting room.
As we as a nation seriously consider whether or not we want a socialized system for our medical care, many would be surprised to learn that our hospitals are not in very good financial shape. Yes, of course they see the expansions and exorbitant hospital bills and immediately assume our medical centers are overcharging for care and loaded with money. For some elite centers this may be true, but overall, hospitals are not in good financial condition and would be irreparably damaged by a single-payer, socialist, “Medicare for All” type system.
(Third in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)
Those touting the “Medicare for All” plan are using the phrase to entice those with just a surface awareness of what Medicare actually is into blindly jumping on board the bandwagon. In fact, the phrase is extremely disingenuous (albeit politically brilliant), designed to intentionally mislead the an public. (It is not so dissimilar from the deceptively named “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”)
The goal is to seduce a mostly uninformed citizenry into supporting a concept that sounds like they’ll (1) never again have to pay anything for medical care; (2) such care will always be readily available when they want it and (3) medical care in the United States will remain top notch.
What Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters say they really want is a Canadian-style, government-, state- or bureaucratically-run health care system and not a plan similar to Medicare here in the U.S.
(Second in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)
The core “moral” principle supporting the Medicare for All proposal is “health care is a right.” This is not so. Free health care is not a human right, no more than free food, clothing or shelter are human rights. An intrinsic right can only come from a transcendent being – God. Kings don’t have “divine rights,” they have “divinely gifted rights” – like all the rest of us do.
No human right can demand the involuntary servitude of another person – either by being forced to provide his or her medical expertise free of charge, or by having the state confiscate the private wealth of others to pay for the care of those who don’t pay. Intellectuals invoke the claim of “rights” even when they can cite no basis or reason. They just claim it, like saying everyone has the right to “affordable housing” or a “living wage.”
The two nations most prominently cited as the darling models of single-payer systems for the Medicare for All crowd are Canada and Great Britain.
(First in a seven-part series: Medicare for All – Quality and Accessible Care for None)
Socialism’s origins in America began 400 years ago, when the Pilgrims made a commitment to leave the Netherlands for the New World after forming a partnership with a group of merchants from London.
Britain granted this new jointly-owned company a plantation in the Virginia Colony in 1617. Of course, we know they missed their intended destination by hundreds of miles when they landed instead along the Massachusetts coast.
This contract was a socialist planner’s dream. It stated that each adult would acquire an equal share in the company; it meant that when they arrived in 1620 Plymouth Colony operated under the governing mandate that all production was owned by the collective. “Food for All” might have been the catchy, feel-good phrase used at the time.
This economic experiment produced disastrous, fatal results. During the very first winter alone, half of the new colonists perished.
Finally, in 1623, America’s first experiment with socialism was mercifully scrapped. Individual, private property rights were established for both land and production giving each settler the right to keep (eat or sell) the fruits of his labors.
Today, just when we thought it was dead (yet again), socialism is experiencing a strong political rebirth in the United States. Combine this sentiment with an increasing distrust/dislike for private insurance companies along with a collective misunderstanding of what defines a “human right” and it’s no surprise “single-payer” or “universal health care” or the attractively-named “Medicare for All” is a steamroller-like political movement.
(This tribute was originally posted in June 2021 and will be republished every Father’s Day as long as I’m alive.)
According to a Rasmussen poll conducted November 17-18, 47% of all voters or 73 million Americans (155 million votes counted so far) believe the November 3rd presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.
