Déjà Vu ~ Times: va: Beware the Spokesman!

Monday, January 4, 2010

va: Beware the Spokesman!

“Talk about déjà vu!!!!!” my friend Sondra headlined in her email reporting her belated research on the state of healthcare debates.* She continued: “It was the tobacco boys all over again. Painful! Painful! Our best ’n brightest industry spokesmen—lined up like errant school chums—all prepped by their corporate-ness to the identical party-line. The new chant?—Recission. Recission. Recission. (Unanimous!) And you know what? I actually felt sorry for them—these free-market devotees touting policy and ‘apple-pie’ American business—for I never saw a sadder display of conformism and lackey-loo in all my life (except, of course, for those tobacco boys**). And it set me to thinking. Right there in that hearing-room was the raison d’étre (’scuse the French) of stratospheric compensation pacts. They buy soul.

“And the sweet hush-hush is that for many of our chiefs and semi-chiefs, it’s only half the story. They spend their days eating, drinking, flying, and perking at company expense. So, I ask you: Like who would give up that kind of privilege—that kind of “security” to speak one’s mind; to question the status quo; to question the ethics?

“So what do you think? Can anyone EVER agree to be a spokesman for pay without risking a fracture of soul? And considering the trade-off, how cheap it seems to go—whatever the perks! Sad, sad, SAD!”

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* July 27, 2009 hearing at Indiana University Southeast, United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations New Albany, IN Field Hearing led by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the said Subcommittee. Spokesmen: Don Hamm President and CEO of Assurant Health, Indianapolis, Indiana; Richard A. Collins, CEO of Golden Rule Insurance Company, a UnitedHealth Group business, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Brian A. Sassi, President and C.E.O., Consumer Business, WellPoint, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1718:terminations-of-health-policies-by-insurance-companies-state-perspectives-and-legislative-solutions&catid=133:subcommittee-on-oversight-and-investigations&Itemid=73&layout=default&date=2009-07-01

**Tobacco boys: http://www.jeffreywigand.com/7ceos.php

Revolving Accounts

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." (OT:Ecclesiastes 1:9-10)

"Dwell in the past and you'll lose an eye. Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes." (Old Russian Proverb)

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THIS SITE HAS NOW BEEN REPLICATED (as of July 7, 2020) at https://dejavu-times.ca

Over time, this blog will contain:
Thoughts & observations
Virtual accounts (va)
Déjà vu quotes
Sketch-Stories
Poems

Déjà Vu ~ Times blog © 2008 - 2020 by SMSmith (unless otherwise noted). Some Rights Reserved. See Creative Commons License at the end of this column/page. NOTE: all quotes from others are subject to the terms of their copyrights and do not fall under my CC licensing.

Déjà Vu ~ Times blog was established April 24, 2008 while the author was living in southern Utah.

My World / Transworld View

(Subject to change over time: experience/learning/ evidence)

▪ Life is a three-act drama with pre-mortal, mortal, and post-mortal stages.
▪ The second act boils us down toward test one:^[1] the test of power.
▪ Abusers of power lose it in Act Three when justice and equity take the bench.
▪ Tipping points happen—over time and a fulcrum.
▪ Motes and beams are everywhere.[2]
▪ Folly is a shadow of every ism, including capitalism.
▪ Money talks louder than morals—all the way to the tipping point.
▪ The direction you are facing, matters.[3]
▪ Extremism in the defense of liberty is extremism.[4]
▪ When the blind follow the blind, it is time to blow the whistle.[5]
▪ Opposites attract the same lobbyists.
▪ Solon of Athens espoused, “Nothing in excess;” laissez-faire capitalists pursue “Everything in excess” (except the costs of gross profit).
▪ “Simplify” displayed on the counter-top of a new 21,000 sq. ft. home does not compute.
▪ High fructose corn syrup is not the staff of life. Unfortunately, sweets can twirl your teeth.
▪ Revolving doors between government and business do not admit sufficient fresh air.
▪ The common good doesn’t seem to be very common.
▪ N. American football is a testosterone pageant in tights.[6]
▪ Exploitation is a delusion of grandeur. Stewardship is a grander conclusion.
▪ The excesses of major religions occur when members fail their espoused values. The excesses of ideological tyrannies occur when tyrants act upon theirs.[7]
▪ Praise is best deflected toward God.
▪ Too many who say, “I do, I do,” don’t.
▪ Electronic media has become the Roman Coliseum of the 21st Century.
▪ The First Law of Attraction[8]: the Devil is more obsessed with persons striving to do and be good than with persons who are not.
▪ The trans-rational[9] is beyond most of us, so if it’s “turtles all the way down,”[10] maybe it is “revelation all the way up.”[11]
▪ Egoism accounts for 80% of human problems. The remaining 27% lies with rhetoric and propaganda.

In the near words of Groucho Marx, “These are my [views]; if you don’t like them, I have others.”

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[1] New Testament: Matt. 4:2-4—The first temptation presented to Jesus, to misuse His power to satisfy self-interest/-will/-gratification.
[2] Ref: Matthew 7:3-5
[3] Old Testament: Jer. 32:33
[4] A Barry Goldwater phrase “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” A phrase applauded by some of the GOP. (Suggestion: reverse liberty and justice to see if it sounds more palatable, or is the latter half merely castor-oil for the first?)
[5] Ref: Matthew 15:14
[6] Observation of a friend, MS, who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.
[7] Ref: Ravi Zacharias
[8] Ref: Adam & Eve; Biblical Job; Jesus in the Wilderness; CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, etc., etc., etc.
[9] Ref: Flatland by Edwin Abbott. In summary, circles, squares and other flatlanders can’t get a fix on spheres and cubes; can’t quite reason themselves into the properties of those in 3-D space. Enlightenment of things beyond (i.e., trans-) Flatland takes condescension from those above & beyond. Any parallels here in 3-D?
[10] Google this phrase if you have not heard of it. It’s just one way of saying we don’t have a rational explanation for some things.
[11] Conditional on the will of the Revelator and the willingness/ ability of the revelatee to receive.

About SMS

A few 6-to-7-Word Memoirs:
▪ Hope for the world comes and goes.
▪ Loves to read more than eat.
▪ Loves to think more than eat.
▪ Eats too much while reading and thinking.
▪ Always running out of time and daylight.
▪ Finds extremes too far from the center.
▪ Troubled by the world’s failure of memory.
▪ Has a tendency to counsel God.
▪ Learned gratitude before it was too late.
▪ Apparently hasn't learned enough gratitude yet.

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No Comments Rationale

1) Time & more needful priorities;
2) Problems observed with many open-comment blogs as so bluntly expressed at http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/comment-policy/ ;

3) People are free to post divergent or convergent views on their own blogs;
4) Learning from comments here would be preferable, but— (see 1, 2, & 3).

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Monday, January 4, 2010

va: Beware the Spokesman!

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