This is an excellent discussion about the real markers of Heart Disease.

We are tired of their blah blah blah

Here is the link to the congressional text and summary of the bill.

Here is video from MSNBC where representative Pramila Jayapal discusses the bill.

Here is summary from the Congressional Research Service

This bill addresses provisions related to federal-aid highway, transit, highway safety, motor carrier, research, hazardous materials, and rail programs of the Department of Transportation (DOT).

Among other provisions, the bill

• extends FY2021 enacted levels through FY2022 for federal-aid highway, transit, and safety programs;
• reauthorizes for FY2023-FY2026 several surface transportation programs, including the federal-aid highway program, transit programs, highway safety, motor carrier safety, and rail programs;
• addresses climate change, including strategies to reduce the climate change impacts of the surface transportation system and a vulnerability assessment to identify opportunities to enhance the resilience of the surface transportation system and ensure the efficient use of federal resources;
• revises Buy America procurement requirements for highways, mass transit, and rail;
• establishes a rebuild rural bridges program to improve the safety and state of good repair of bridges in rural communities;
• implements new safety requirements across all transportation modes; and
• directs DOT to establish a pilot program to demonstrate a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee to restore and maintain the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund and achieve and maintain a state of good repair in the surface transportation system.

This is a brilliant 50 minute discussion by two of the world's most intelligent and thoughtful economists who aren't enamored by free market ideology to the point where they are blind-sided by reality.

In this episode, Richard Wolff and Yanis Varoufakis examine Biden’s first year in office, and share their perspectives on the current political and economic order and its future, from techno-feudalism to the new Cold War on China. They also speak about the ongoing pandemic and the profound transformations taking place in our time.

The discussion starts at around the timestamp 8:01.

Quentin Kopp is a farce. He gets free reign in my district monthly publication to promote his bullshit and lately I have been fighting back with logic, common sense, and words.

Here is my response to this

Editor:

My Response to Mr. Kopp’s November commentary

Mr. Kopp:

You obviously did not read my precise reasoning about why government needs to invest where private investment cannot. Your argument is specious. Hide behind your cherry-picked Utah State professor all you want.

Namely,“Lambast the ‘tax, tax, spend’ all you want, but a society functions best when wealth is syphoned off by taxes into a government entity that can spend on investments that the previous wealth holders would never make. Do you think the interstate transportation system, or the national railroad network that developed after the the civil war would have developed without government funding? Or the internet infrastructure? Private corporations make decisions about short-term profits that are often not in the best interest of the larger society. If we want to leave the decision making to private for-profit entities alone, what evolves is a society distorted by the motivations of those who gain control of the for-profit private entities, and those motivations quickly diverge with the larger interests of the larger society over time, sometimes very quickly. Government agencies are captured, legislatures are bribed, media entities are owned, … it’s a long repetitive history that we have to unfortunately relearn every 100 years. It’s just that now, the benefits of technology make us think that private for-profit entities are benevolent and long-term in their thinking, when that is only transitory. Eventually the private for-profit entities begin to dominate the public forum to the point that the public forum becomes captured by the lobbyists of the private for-profit entities, twisting the public interest into their own interests, and making sure they hire spokespersons who provide sophistic arguments that justify the status quo. People like Mr. Kopp.”

By the way, how was that awesome private investment on 50-year-old San Bruno gas conduits that couldn’t pass PIG tests (look it up )? It took government spending to change a poor decision by a private firm that prioritized profit over public safety.

We didn’t get internet because Comcast made a long-term investment 50 years ago. We got internet because the government created the ground floor investment that 50 years later Comcast could use to create a profitable private industry.

If you actually understood the history of symbiosis between the government and the private economy then … well, I guess that is expecting too much from a hired propagandist living well in his suburbia confines, willing to be the icon for carrying the tawdry arguments of the short-term interests against the long-term interests. Money is blind. It is only usefull when it creates something that benefits the long-term functionalism of any social system. If money becomes hoarded or aggregated that long-term functionalism will be sacrificed.

That is not a counterfeit utterance. Speak for yourself, I guess, but that is the gat-dern truth, Mr. Kopp.

Sad. Actually pathetic.

Gino Napoli

Born in the Richmond District and current resident of the Richmond District

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ update: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I added this comment to Mr. Kopp's November commentary.

With all due respect Mr. Kopp, when someone confronts me with a reasonable statement that might initially counter that which I myself view, my first instinct .. is to question my own views. Maybe that reasonable statement has merit and it is me who needs to reflect and consider that I might be wrong.

I don’t double down on what I insist. If that is your first instinct, then I think that automatically disqualifies your next thought process as beneficial. Self-introspection and criticism is necessary for a true evolution of understanding, otherwise it’s just a blind reaction to some underlying insecurity that being confronted means a denigration of your being. Criticism does not mean decimation.

Personally I can disagree with someone and still have a long term friendship. Not everyone can do that. However when I send my screeds, I am really trying to reach out and help you understand a point of view that has some merit and legitimacy. A point of view that is held by a wide variety of academics, including professors of economics. I could but I won’t mention their names, because you can do that research yourself.

It’s all on you dawg. Which path do you choose to take? Just remember that those who listen to irrationality are not really doing you any favors. Fawning over nonsense is no different than obsequious fans who tear the clothes off of their heroes while said heroes run for lives to their waiting limousines hoping to get back to the hotel without having to encounter the ravenous public.

Think about that.

Heme Iron is more absorbable and only comes from meat. There is inadequate evidence that red meat causes cancer. Lower levels of iron in children are correlated with IQ. "The higher the iron intake throughout the pregnancy, the more mature or the more complex grey matter was at the time of birth."

This is an excellent channel for Scientific knowledge by an American who lives in Japan called "What I've Learned"

Carbohydrates for humans are like alcohol to humans. Our bodies managed a way to handle Carbs and Alcohol because they naturally occur within the eco-system's food chain by which humans evolved to eat. However, beyond a certain amount alcohol and carbohydrates create a dysfunctionality that wreaks havoc on your body and body's cells that eventually will kill. It's essentially low level toxicity over a long period of time accumulating into a metabolic disease that manifests in many different ways : cancer, diabetes, alzheimers, parkinson, ciliac, autoimmune, et cetera.

This is Dr. Gary Fettke from Tasmania.

The body goes through great lengths to remove Carbohydrates from the blood, so it's presence is treated by the body as a toxin.

The interesting thing is how rapidly the body removes these things from the blood (Glucose and Fructose)... the human body does not like leaving glucose and fructose in the blood. So why are glucose and fructose removed so actively. Well, just maybe, glucose and fructose are toxic.

The circulating level of glucose is about 4 grams or one teaspoon. Anything more the body sees as toxic.

Sten Ekberg is a great resource.

I am responding to the San Francisco crank who gets a platform in my district monthly newspaper, Quentin Kopp:

Why are you giving Mr. Kopp a platform?

It would be one thing if Mr. Kopp presents an opinion. Everyone has a right to their opinion. It is quite another thing however if Mr. Kopp presents a pompous obfuscation of reality that pretends to be an opinion, even if there is a small percentage of people in the community who have been hoodwinked by the allure of what Mr. Kopp is using as the foundation upon which he is propping up his obfuscation of reality that I am politely calling an opinion. Because this is not an opinion. This is a purposefully designed intentional diatribe meant to slice and dice any attempt at preventing the wealthy from hoarding and making sure society re-invests because the people that sponsor the ilk of Mr. Kopp would rather live under the illusion that Adam Smith’s unfettered “invisible hand” inevitably means progress. A book Mr. Kopp probably hasn’t read, because Adam Smith actually understood that unfettered capitalism actually undermines society and the functioning of the economy.

I will ignore all of the political-bombs Mr. Kopp tosses out like a proud sailor relieving himself over the side of a sail boat. However, uttering the mantra of “Tax, tax, tax and spend” is a straw man argument. We live in a society where we pay taxes and make investments in society in order to have a functional society and a functional economy. When you pretend that tax cuts to the wealthy pay for themselves, and then increase spending so that you can give connected insiders sweet government contracts, that’s not the remedy for the mantra that pillories the straw man argument. That is simply a dishonest argument. The fact that Mr. Kopp is using it speaks volumes.

Lambast the “tax, tax, spend” all you want, but a society functions best when wealth is syphoned off by taxes into a government entity that can spend on investments that the previous wealth holders would never make. Do you think the interstate transportation system, or the national railroad network that developed after the the civil war would have developed without government funding? Or the internet infrastructure? Private corporations make decisions about short-term profits that are often not in the best interest of the larger society. If we want to leave the decision making to private for-profit entities alone, what evolves is a society distorted by the motivations of those who gain control of the for-profit private entities, and those motivations quickly diverge with the larger interests of the larger society over time, sometimes very quickly. Government agencies are captured, legislatures are bribed, media entities are owned, … it’s a long repetitive history that we have to unfortunately relearn every 100 years. It’s just that now, the benefits of technology make us think that private for-profit entities are benevolent and long-term in their thinking, when that is only transitory. Eventually the private for-profit entities begin to dominate the public forum to the point that the public forum becomes captured by the lobbyists of the private for-profit entities, twisting the public interest into their own interests, and making sure they hire spokespersons who provide sophistic arguments that justify the status quo. People like Mr. Kopp.

Meanwhile we sink into the state of France prior to the 1780’s, a feckless government owned by competing members of the aristocracy, insisting upon economic privileges, unable to see the damage that the hijacking of the economic system by the hoarding of wealthy has caused upon large swaths of the population. I am saddened that my country is being ripped apart by delusion paradigms disguised as responsible statesmanship. It’s a con game. Or as the old jazz song has it, “Nice work, if you can get it.”