There I go Again! Local News and Information, Over and Over Again – and Being Mocked by the Stupidity in America for Attempting to Attain Happiness… MAN, HOW AWFUL OF ME IN AMERICA (he says facetiously)… How silly of me to have the expectations I have
I sit down at my computer this morning, in happiness. My happiness is disturbed when pressconnects.com keeps sending me email so as to force my face into reading their digital copies of a daily newspaper. I know they are not trying to do this, but the timing of it – while in happiness – are they attempting to rub my face in the fact that I cannot have a print copy delivered to my home?
In order to do the digital, the Gannett Press & Sun-Bulletin, they have turned it, as well as their other newspapers, into something for which they are not unique, deliberately ridding us of one source on paper: local news AND INFORMATION. We are FORCED to use Google where the ones with money-loving intentions can have THEIR websites come up first in the result list. The ones first on the list are usually not what we are trying to locate in information.
We are FORCED to sit at a computer desk reading a newspaper with a computer product which is gray lettering and harder to read than black lettering, regardless of the size (zooming). And the difficulties with zooming in and out are impractical and imprudent given to us by impotent men.
Our happiness for sitting and reading a newspaper in an easy chair is removed. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, especially when we are those who DO NOT put love of money first in our lives, is being removed from us.
Our happiness was about walking across a busy state road to retrieve our newspaper and walking right back so as to sit in an easy chair to read the local news AND INFORMATION (what there is of it) and do puzzles and so forth, rather than do lousy violent video games. At one time, we had the newspaper delivered right to our door. But hey. We can take the change to walking across a busy state road. It is preferable to reading online.
Even when there is an article in the newspaper to save, it is easier to clip and copy on a printer than it is to try to print a digital copy of a newspaper on a printer.
With technology, total lack of using tools which are intuitive. That is, unless one spends 24/7 doing computers and technology – maintaining it and tweaking the settings.
For those who get their jollies from spending most of their time with technology and missing out on human life itself, with its civilization consisting of culture, history, arts, sciences, wellness, they then go on to block those of us who DO wish to pursue knowledge to fill the human brain. With lousy groupthink like those who make a joke of the pursuit of happiness, we are faced with groupthink dictatorship, otherwise known as peer pressure. Peer pressure which benefits the ones who put first priority on money-loving attitudes. Such people are a joke as they push these dictatorial ways upon those of us who want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Oh, that’s right! But most people are that way in America today! Apparently they are. Like lemmings being led to destruction off a cliff. They dictate to people like me who seek happiness – “come along because you will enjoy the ride [off a cliff]!”
And it is not government at fault. It is the predominance of money-loving attitudes in the supply-side Reaganomics people in the business oligarchs who CONTROL the government. Government is NOT the problem.
Make America great again? OK. Make America great again in the method done during the period of time called the Enlightenment. you know. Mozart and Haydn were two composers of Western Europe during that period of time. It also was the time of Deists and proposals for a democracy with checks and balances. It was the period when Adam Smith (who had contact with Ben Franklin during that time period) proposed we move away from a style of economics we NOW call supply-side economics. Smith proposed hecks and balances in economics, similar to the concepts of checks and balances in democratic government.
In the 20th Century, Teddy Roosevelt saw the robber barons had twisted the ideas of Adam Smith to THEIR liking and to THEIR benefit only. So, he became the trust buster and made America great again in that fashion.
Screw the ideas of charismatic Reagan with his opioid for America: supply-side economics. Reagan set off a path in which followers like Trump, Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis, Giuliani, and other narcissistic crap in America followed so as to NOT make America great again.
Now corporations are dictated by the oligarchic fools with a love of money as being the FIRST PRIORITY. Not money. I said, LOVE OF MONEY. Not best practices for making a better picture for profits, but LOVE OF MONEY.
This goes for newspapers with local news, too. Run by the foolish fat pigs of the oligarchs and in a dictatorial way by telling readers of newspapers what makes us happy. Telling the demand side of the market what makes us happy. Supply and demand means the supply-siders should be discovering the happiness in the demand side, not just one age or group of people and the happiness among a group of people only.
Reminds me of the scene in Star Wars with young Anakin Skywalker (ultimately Darth Vader). Anakin Skywalker used the power of the jedi to convince a person that such person “does not want to do that.” The point of Darth Vader as a young lad was to say, “you won’t be happy if you do that.” Dictating happiness so that one can achieve the love of money which, in scriptures says, is the root of all evil.
An adult student of mine once told me, “professor, you have a great deal of patience in dealing with my classmates..” The student said, “I am not sure I can go into teaching because I would have to have that patience and I am not sure I can achieve it.”
I then told the student that one needs to come to know oneself and make the decision as to the path to take. One might feel they are unable to achieve the necessary patience and that might be true. But at the same time, it is POSSIBLE to learn patience over time. If one wishes to pursue a path to teaching, then do it, keeping in mind what has to be done to overcome obstacles in that path and be willing to LEARN how to overcome the obstacles.
In other words. We don’t have to live our lives by having someone TELL us and DICTATE to us what makes us happy. We need to recognize who we are and decide what is the best path to make us happy. And ignoring the evil sides (Darth Vader type telling us how to be happy – i.e., love of money) as taught to us as a means for happiness is important.
As with the student thinking he could not be patient enough may be a reasonable assessment of what that student can do. On the other hand, as taught by Captain Kangaroo and the little engine which said, “can’t,” we can also turn to thinking, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” But we need to come to know our self better and happiest and stop allowing others tell us what makes us happy.
Stop allowing those who throw the “sin book” (Romans) at us for human beings are not here to judge, but to coexist. Notice the “sin book” was given to a population of barbarians, one of the most barbaric ones in history – the Romans and their fascism. It was designed for that population, but not all are like that nor have to be like that – like people who call themselves “leaders” – Mussolini and others.
What makes America great is a return to the ideas of our American Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers made America great, in spite of its imperfections.
Before Britain had a mentally ill king (George III) and lost the colonies due to George III’s lousy mental capacities as a leader, it was more deserving of a Statue of Liberty. In the late 16th Century, Queen Elizabeth I opened the English arms to Jews and Protestant Huguenots who sought to be happy, rather than face the genocide of the Roman Catholic Church. “Give me your tired, your poor…” was once what made England a super power. Too bad Americans are so stupid that they might not deserve having that Statue of Liberty at all.
To make a joke out of those of us who wish to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is as barbaric as the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Empire before it. Whether we attain happiness by sitting in an easy chair reading a print copy of a newspaper or with other civilized ways, we should not be mocked for standing up and saying, this is what we want which is necessary to our happiness. We are not chopped liver portions of the demand side of the marketplace. All examples of barbaric and dictatorial means. Peer pressure and groupthink. Don’t tell us to just accept it because we won’t.
Tioga Herald 
Healthcare
Dear Editors:
My Grandpa Willet Cornwell (1886-1948)was a resident of Newark Valley from about the turn of the 20th Century or so until he built homes and lived in one in the Watson Boulevard / Hooper Road area of Endwell. He had a home, sawmill, farm in Newark Valley. His farm was on Irish Settlement Road. He had dairy cows within the village of Newark Valley.
During the 1940s and from his farm on Irish Settlement Road, he sold hay to Cuban horse farmers. My father transported the hay to New York City barges where the hay was loaded and then transported to Cuba. We believe that a library colleague of mine, her family exiled from Cuba when she was 12 years old and Castro confiscated her family horse farms in the area where we believe the hay from Newark Valley was being sent.
In 1948, Grandpa Cornwell was living with in Endwell. My father, just out of the war, was living with them in Endwell, but working for Ross Tappan & Sons (Newark Valley), as he had been doing before his service in the Pacific. According to the story shared with me by my father during his last few months alive, in early 2018, Grandpa ended up in a hospital (TBD, what hospital?) in 1948. After a few days, according to my father, Grandpa Willet learned what the hospital bill was going to be. He realized he did not have the funds to pay for that hospital stay. He checked himself out of the hospital and went to his home in Endwell. My dad told me that he departed for work in Newark Valley one day and got a call that his father had died at home. Grandpa Willet was only 62 years of age at the time of his death.
As a result, lawyers swooped in and left my grandmother with virtually nothing. At some point in time, my father purchased an apartment building in Newark Valley.
Nevertheless, my father moved my grandmother into an apartment he built in the back section of that building. That was where she lived until she passed in 1962.
This historical background provides information (in excess?) for what I am about to say.
here we are. The year 2022. Repeat. In 1948, Grandpa Willet Cornwell died because he was not able to afford healthcare. My dad was available to help his mother, but he always maintained a sour taste in his mouth for lawyers. That is how we all act, right? Don’t worry because we can overcome the obstacles, right? To me, I don’t ask WHY, but ask WHY NOT something better for all of us?
Private healthcare, according to tRump and the Republicans is what we need. Demonstrates just how much these people don’t know about “private” healthcare. I know what it was at one time. Three country doctors in Newark Valley, as a kid growing up here. That was PRIVATE healthcare. How many doctors does Newark Valley have now? We are lucky if we can get an appointment with the one doctor in town who comes from UHS and located in an office on Whig Street.
Let us return to the 1970s. The three doctors were all retiring. Newark Valley did not have a doctor. My mother, Margaret (Schoonmaker) Cornwell, worked on a committee in Newark Valley, acting as a health services coordinator so as to find a new medical doctor. They found a MD. A Jewish MD. Questions still remain whether the people here had a hidden agenda of anti-Semitism because none had experienced through physical exams, so tried to push the guy out of town. My mother defended him, for various reasons, but particularly for the sake of her family.
Other information about the 1970s which validates why rural areas went without private healthcare? (1) My mother mentioned that the problem the committee to find doctors in the 1970s found was due to the changes in society for a predominant love of money. Doctors were not going into practices as general practitioners (also known as primary care physician), but were looking to make money as specialists. As specialists, doctors needed to make more money in urban areas where the population was more dense than in rural populations. With the old private country doctors in Tioga County, they could refer, if necessary, to a specialist. Otherwise, the general practitioner took care of patients, from annual physical exams and other matters. I seem to recall that the “specialist” pediatrician my mom used for me was a Dr. Nichols in Owego. Only memories from my mom and what she said, not exacting research on it. When she used a pediatrician for me, it was in the 1950s.
(2) According to various sources, the private health insurance situation changed. H.R. Haldeman (Watergate burglar) under Richard Nixon, had created an underwriting firm for health insurance. This opened the door for supply0-side economics in private health care. According to some sources, this opened the door for medical specialists while GPs went by the wayside and there was no interest in pursuing a GP career. How many times, today, have we witnesses a shortage of GPs, except for those IMMIGRANTS who come here from other nations. No Americans wish to pursue such a career. Amazon brags about developing careers in technology and robots instead. And educators who know best are shelved in trying to encourage education for anyone who can find a niche in what our society really and truly needs. Our reputations as educators are tarnished by lawyers who take control and blame all the public education problems on the faculty.
Then we have to listen to the BS from tRUMP and Republicans about “private healthcare.” Let me discuss this matter.
So, when my dad told me, in 2018, about the details of what happened to Grandpa Willet in 1948, I was furious. As an educator in Florida, I had to face the influence of then-governor Rick Scott, the lousy man who plead the 5th many times when he was investigated for Medicare fraud. Even tRUMP has said that anyone who pleads the 5th is likely guilty. This Scott man was instrumental in replacing our retired college president, a man who came up the ranks of education (and had done very well; I can list his accomplishments), with a lawyer with no background in education, as president of the college. It almost felt like a deja vu moment with regard to lawyers, especially from what my dad explained about his sour and bitter taste towards lawyers, due to what they did when my Grandpa Willet was unable to pay hospital bills and died, as a result of all of that.
I can also go into a mountain of more recent experiences with this private healthcare we are experiencing today. It is all worth considering. However, when the money we all put into Medicare is being embezzled and the possibilities are a lousy man who sits in the U.S. Senate now, getting away with “murder” (as we sometimes say in a figurative way), people don’t think that it is our LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS which are being stolen from us. That is because some stupid people; put the name of “Medicare Tax” on it. I guess that was to open the doors for thieves like Rick Scott, as they attempt to say, “government is the problem” and then degrade the ideas of healthcare for all by tarnishing the ideas with false ideas that it is “socialism.” I just mentioned how it is NOT socialism, but long-term CAPITALIST investments. Sad to say, but I have been writing this for the past 20 years or so and NO ONE picks up on it, for the good of WE THE PEOPLE. (Same thing with FICA – a LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENT IN POOLED RESOURCE FOR ALL AND NOT TO BE USED FOR ANYTHING BUT WHAT IT IS INTENDED TO BE USED).
Should there be those who are doing Medicare and Social Security fraud, stop calling it taxes so they can be more firmly convicted in their fraud. Doesn’t anyone get what I am saying? Senator Elizabeth Warren, listen up and stop the crap about the “rich paying more for it” and we can put these frauds away by defining unethical stuff like robbery from LONG TERM CAPITALIST INVESTMENTS MADE BY THE PEOPLE.
Yes, to fund things, we also need to remove the cap on investments in Social Security which means the top wealthy ones pay less out of their income than the rest of us do. Yes. That needs to stop. In fact, the wealthy are making a big deal about this gap because THEY ARE TREATING IT LIKE AN INVESTMENT NOT A TAX, while these wealthy pigs screw the rest of us.
Senator Warren, we are behind you. We hope you have a handle on what I am saying in this essay, whether Medicare for healthcare or Social Security for retirement. Both run hand in hand once we all choose to retire, especially if we are FORCED into an earlier retirement than what we might desire, due to health conditions.
One more thing about healthcare. Obamacare is based on a model of a Republican governor. It needs to be reformed, not destroyed. The fascist Republican leadership today wishes to destroy, not reform. Such people can be motivated by any errors in Obamacare which need fixing because people find an error and they instantly get on the bandwagon of errors. One such error with Obamacare is that it ends at age 65. Then, everyone is forced into the really lousy privatized Medicare established by George W. Bush and the Republicans with its lousy donut hole, subservient to private health insurance and big pharma. In other words, subservient to supply-side Reaganomics by the fat pig oligarchy.
This is a lengthy essay about healthcare. But what can be done otherwise when people just look for what they can agree, according to their perspective and never considering being humble enough to learn and gain wisdom? What can be done when a lousy person from Australia pushes his agenda with his Fox media and people are listening. In the end, people are spending more time on Fox and social media and then complain if an essay is “too long.” That is bizarre because I would bet people can spend less time reading a lengthy essay, time spent doing stupid things on social media or listening to Fox Commentary for long periods of time; or trying to spend a large amount of time maintaining technology in the home in order to do the social media and other bizarre stuff. There was a day when I could retrieve a newspaper from the doorstep, sit in an easy chair, and read the newspaper and perhaps do puzzles or games in it. We could do it in less time than we see people spending on social media and often doing crappy stuff. Go ahead. Defend the Internet and social media, rather than reading this lengthy essay about healthcare in America and, particularly, in a rural America which is suffering.
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Commentary, Healthcare, wellness, medicine
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