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Obamacare: Examination and Response
An appraisal of the Affordable Care Act and-- with some guesswork-- its tricky politics. Then, a way to capture major new revenue, even paying down existing Medicare debt, without raising premiums or harming quality care. Then, an offering of reforms even more basic, but more incremental. Finally, the briefest of statements about the basic premise.
Right Angle Club: 2016
In progress.
Right Angle Club 2017
Dick Palmer and Bill Dorsey died this year. We will miss them.
Let's Annex Canada
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| President Donald Trump |
To read the newspapers, President Trump's revoking the Paris Climate Agreement is the biggest thing around. But it has no enforcement provisions, everything is voluntary, and its prospects of making the world colder are slim. The President is acting like a bull in the china shop, while the effectiveness of the document is questionable, indeed. The opposition party appears to have the motive of keeping him busy, so he won't have time to do anything substantial, and his motives are probably similar, except in reverse.
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| Paris Climate Agreement |
So I hereby propose a different global warming project, following the example of the cavemen. You will recall that during the last Ice Age, the cavemen didn't have a Treaty of Westphalia to worry about. So they adopted a different strategy: they migrated. Since 1648, we now have national boundaries to consider, so our way of creating room to move is to annex Canada. Those Americans who feel like getting colder would then merely have to go where it is cold. What would the Canadians think about that?
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| Louis-Joseph de Montcalm |
The French Canadians in Quebec might not like my proposal, since they have dark memories of Montcalm, or was his name Wolfe? But the oil-rich parts of Western Canada have oil which probably has some border tax they would like to be rid of. The Eastern part, the Maritime Provinces, petitioned America a few decades ago to annex them, so presumably, they would like to have some gerrymandering, or possibly fishing subsidies would suffice. At least half of the Canadian political class would oppose, but they would be neutralized by the other half who would be in favor. It sounds politically feasible.
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| Arctic melt |
The attraction would be that it's cold up there, although Toronto and Montreal went underground to keep warm. The Arctic ice pack is melting, and climate change people keep telling us about it, with photos, and the Russians are selling tickets for tourists on ice breakers. If there are any Tories still around, they would vote Republican, whereas the people in Saskatchewan would probably still vote for Socialized Medicine. The French? Well, they would probably have thirty parties and cancel each other. Certain parts of Canada are immersed in the Gulf Stream and are warmer than Boston. I understand some provinces don't have taxes, certainly suggesting a paradise. From what I hear of the behavior of Esquimaux women, there are attractions for men, and the male surplus would certainly attract some American girls.
So what are we waiting for? The Chinese or the Russians might get the same idea, and we could always sell it to them if we are disappointed.
Originally published: Monday, June 05, 2017; most-recently modified: Thursday, May 23, 2019