These are three things that I try to bring to mind, as I read the news, and the Trump Takeover unfolds.
I take it as given that the reader knows this Presidential transition is not normal.
And that breaking stuff is easy.
In order, my three main points of reality-based comfort are:
The Fed
Source: Via Wikipedia, “By AgnosticPreachersKid – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6282818”.
It makes a nice mantra.
I chant that, in my mind, to calm the jumpies that I get, whenever I start thinking about who now has access to what, where, within the computer system that literally makes U.S. Government payments.
Sure, they’ve let the barbarians into the Treasury, and while that opens the door to all kinds of potential mischief and avoidable security issues, I should stay focused on the dollar. Because everything I own is denominated in those.
So, who makes (creates) the dollar anyway? And, likewise, who runs the banking system?
The answer I come up with is the Fed. Not Treasury.
At which point I breathe a sigh of relief. And try to fix that fact firmly in my head. The (security of) the dollar depends on the Fed, not the Treasury.
At least for now. I think.
This, despite the Treasury being tasked with creating the physical tokens we exchange as money, in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. But a) don’t confuse that with real money, and b) they do that, in effect, under license and control of the Fed, as the bills themselves are Federal Reserve Notes. It’s why even the lowly $1 bill has a unique serial number on it.
Global warming
The science there is pretty good. We’ve got a handle on the major trends, under a business-as-usual scenario. No shortage of credible warnings.
Without a doubt, the pro-fossil-fuel, anti-renewable, climate-change head-in-the-sand posture of the Republican party, at this moment in time, will eventually stand out as having been spectacularly dumb.
Even if I’m an optimist on this — a position that does not come naturally to me — and assume we’ll eventually get a handle on climate change, our descendants will curse us for at least the easily-avoidable costs we now impose.
Better not to burn it. If you can avoid it. That’s the minimal answer to fossil fuels.
By that lowest-bar criterion, Republican global warming policy flunks.
Science ain’t going nowhere. All this anti-science nonsense, in the long run, all of that loses.
It may take a while. But it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
Medicare?
I read where Musk’s Team was going to identify fraud in the Medicare program.
I’ve been around Medicare most of my professional life. FWIW. So this was a very comfortable topic for me.
And I said, fraud in Medicare? I’d bet you can find some.
There always has been, always will be, fraud in Medicare.
Ideally, you’d like to keep it to minimum. As would any insurer. Or any sane individual, for that matter.
My point being that it’s not as if this issue of fraud has passed unnoticed.
To the contrary. I can vaguely recall the Medicare program having, effectively, competitions among contractors, to see who could flag the most fraud. And I vaguely recall that IBM and Watson itself took on this task, at some point. But without anything much happening. My memory or not, there’s too much money to be made in stopping it, if nothing else.
Thus, I see a proposal to throw de-identified Medicare claims data up against the latest AI, and … see what sticks?
Not a bad idea.
I’d be surprised if it hasn’t already been tried. Twice over. Perhaps Musk has access to a “better” AI? Perhaps the Medicare claims processors were behind the times? Or perhaps not. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, or the problem remains ill-suited to AI.
In any case, fraud in Medicare claims. Been there. Done that.
I’d bet they’re going to find some.
But no more than anybody else.
But if so, that would be reassuringly normal. Everybody takes a hack at fraud in Medicare. To the point where I’m pretty sure there ain’t no low-hanging fruit. Or not much.
But I recall that Medicare got stung badly, recently, by a novel scam that involved buying up dying DME suppliers, and thereby obtaining the existing DME suppliers’ licensure (registration?) with the Medicare program. Whoever bought up those dying DME businesses then abused that portfolio of strategically purchased DME suppliers’ credentials. A lot. Billed the fill-in-the-profanity-here out of them.
Then, last I heard, successfully skedaddled with the cash.
A notable black eye for Medicare, at the very least. That’s where I lost the thread. But that’s a novel and well-thought-out scam. Perhaps that was a one-off.
Separately, when you get right down to it, this Administration knows a thing or two about Medicare fraud. Here’s a Washington Post article about the several Trump pardons of individuals convicted of serious Medicare fraud (reference). It’s not often that you get a name to attach to a $1B Medicare fraud scheme. In the context of “pardoned by the President”.
Conclusion
This morning, the plants in my yard are weighted down with a quarter-inch of accumulated sleet. Meanwhile, the sleet has turned to sporadic rain.
I am sitting in front of a lit wood stove, as I write this. Between the weather, and the way the USA is headed, I needed some fire.
Something basic. Comforting. But real. Something I think I understand.
I want my life to be more along the lines of a stack of kiln-dried firewood. And a bit less like a dumpster fire.
If that’s not too much to ask.
