Welcome to the August Health & Medicine issue of NorthBay biz magazine. In addition to all the stories this month, there’s a special report on artisanal cheese. Please enjoy all the features and columns in the areas only locally owned, formerly glossy business publication. You can rely on NorthBay biz as your local source for business news and information because, “Helping grow your business isn’t just something we do…It’s all we do!”
Health care in the North Bay remains a topic of high interest to our readers. With that in mind, each month our Live Wise columnists offer the latest in prevention strategies and valuable information concerning new treatments. Please join me in welcoming our three new medical columnists. Last month, Rajina Ranadive, M.D., a board-certified internal medicine physician affiliated with St. Joseph Health, shared the promising medicinal benefits of turmeric. In this issue, Peter Brett, M.D., a board-certified oncologist at Sutter Medical Group of the Redwoods shares what he’s learned about cannabis as a treatment for cancer, and in the months ahead Sal Iaquinta, M.D., who specializes in head and neck surgery at Kaiser Permanente, will also join the Live Wise team. We’re looking forward to their contributions. Please join me in a special thanks to our previous columnists: James DeVore, M.D., Steven Levenberg, D.O. and Kirk Pappas, M.D.
The progressive lefts’ evolving voter base seems to be founded in an eclectic assortment of minority groups that possess, or are encouraged to possess, a victim mentality that justifies any preposterous claim of redress to “make things right.” Absent intellectual integrity, this angry me-first-take-from-others-attitude, gains traction by its grating and seemingly endless 24/7 repetition. A service happily performed by a mainstream media eager to support any real or perceived leftist grievance.
Back in the ’70s, the Democratic Party took a hard left turn that resulted in the presidential nomination of George McGovern. In last year’s presidential election, the party’s platform followed a similar path established earlier by President Obama that had less to do with Main Street, bread-and-butter issues than it did with identity politics and issues regarding race, gender, ethnicity, culture and class. If you couldn’t claim membership in some protected class it was as if your interests were sublimated—they weren’t important enough to warrant any political action.
Needing a job, paying the bills, the welfare of your kids took a back seat to issues that had little relevancy to middle America—same-sex marriage, abortion rights, sanctuary cities, racist cops, bathroom rights, renaming streets and buildings that bore the names of old white men, etc. These were the issues that dominated the Democratic Party’s platform. The top three economic issues I best remember from last year’s campaign were—no, not job creation, a balanced budget or national debt reduction, but rather, free college tuition, elimination of all student college debt and jacking up taxes on Wall Street and the insufferable, rich 1 percent.
Sub-dividing America and becoming the designated spokesman for these grievance-filled groups might be a strategy designed for successful fund raising, but it further polarizes the country and erodes what little common ground that’s left. At some point, the left’s negative, destructive campaign becomes unsustainable and will be seen for what it is.
There’s only so much hate and only so much of other people’s money to go around. Eventually, the only ones the left will have to hate will be themselves and the only money left to take will be from each other.
A 2011 Pew poll of Millennials revealed that there was more support for socialism than capitalism. Forty-nine percent had positive views of socialism, while only 46 percent had positive views of capitalism.
How could this happen? This is America, right? Doesn’t everyone know by now that socialism doesn’t work? Haven’t they heard the famous Margaret Thatcher line, “The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
I think Thomas Sowell says it best: “I have never understood why it is ‘greedy’ to want to keep the money you’ve earned, but not greedy to want to take somebody else’s money.” So what we have is a me-first, greedy generation that feels entitled to get lots of things they claim to deserve, but have never worked for.
As Millennials get older, acquire better jobs and pay more taxes, perhaps they’ll begin to figure out that they are the ones who are actually paying for all those “free” goodies they once demanded when they were young and convinced of their wisdom.
Let’s close with one more piece of wisdom from Thomas Sowell: “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else.”
That’s it for now. Enjoy this month’s magazine.
