Sometimes- no often- we dwell in our personal worlds and, with the hectic nature of our lives, along with the hectic nature of the information bombarded at us through print, voice, or electronic means, we fail in our ability to see the bigger picture. It's simply too difficult, I think, for many of us (I'm speaking about myself and most other 'average' Americans) to step back, see the forest for the trees, and make the connections that we should concerning our country and how decisions are made, announced, and generally accepted as just the status-quo.
I was going through my emails this morning, in a relaxed manner, and came upon two stories which put an exclamation point on how our nation often operates, and how these operations need to be seen in comparison/contrast to elicit the gasps they deserve...
I was going through my emails this morning, at the proper Saturday morning pace and with no pressing other matters, and I first came upon this item, linked from a daily digest I get from the American Society for Clinical Pathology (I am a Pathologist): Maine seks to cut funds for smoking cessation
The gist of the article is that the state wants to cut 430K from it's Medicaid budget to 'save money'. The article goes on to say- in the very next sentence- that there's really no savings here since the state would be forgoing a greater amount of matching federal funds. There's no real analysis here regarding the marginal costs of not spending this money on smoking cessation and instead on the medical bills of smokers who, statisically, would have quit as a result of these funds, but you never get such a luxury from our media. Downstream, the article gets a little 'wonky' (ugh) but it's all smoke and mirrors.
A few minutes later, I came upon this gem, which will be seen by few, analyzed by fewer, and forgotten to the black hole of daily posterity in hours:Peabody Coal to pay huge monthly consultant's fee
Peabody is a wheezing coal giant, beset by falling sales and profits as they find their particulate-rich, asthma-exacerbating product in less demand as natural gas takes it's bite. They're gonna pay this consultant, though, at least 5000/day to consult for them, a process which is of course undefined and thank God for them that it is. It's private sector austerity at it's finest. We can do the math to see how quickly this herculean labor might add up to 430K.
So, there they are, these two isolated little news atoms in our collective national tissue, one a kick to the groin of poor people in Maine, and the other a massage to the groin of a 0.1%er. Who ever connects them? How many times a day, every day, does this kind of thing meet our general acquiescence? How crazy is our country to essentially approve of each story in the name of fiscal probity or jobs?
It's just another morning in America.