Season 9, Episode 5 August 4, 2024

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This is the Listening Tube.

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Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Take a moment right now to subscribe. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, we'll hear an origin story about freedom of the press and a grueling fight for survival. Plus, I'll speak to a writer who brings a unique perspective to social and political issues.

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But first, not the headlines.

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On last week's program, my guest, Mark Sutton, told us that in the United States, women outlived men by almost six years. If it was a basketball score, the women win 81 to 75. The average for us combined, according to a new chart on visualcapitalist.com, is 77.5 years. This list included a host of other countries as well. Allow me to rattle them off. Germany, the UK, Austria, Canada, Holland, Belgium, France, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, and Japan. Surprisingly, out of all of those countries, the United States has the lowest life expectancy by at least three years. Yet all we ever hear about is how America's doctors are the best and America's pharmaceutical companies are the most productive. Well, the pharmaceutical company part's true, if you go by how much they spend to create a television commercial. It's almost as if these ad agencies just found out they got a contract to make a commercial for a new drug, and when they see what the budget is, someone in the room says, I believe we'll be needing to rent some airplanes. And a hangar. Oh, and a yacht, so we'll need a set near the beach. We should be able to get filming done in three to five days. Well, it's no wonder then that despite America having the lowest life expectancy among the countries listed, we also have the highest per capita cost for health care. The average among the countries is six thousand seven hundred dollars. What does it cost an average American? Nearly double the average at twelve thousand six hundred dollars per person. The lowest per capita cost was for those who live in Japan at five thousand three hundred dollars. Japan also has the highest life expectancy among the listed countries at 84.1 years. That's almost six and a half years longer than the average American at less than half the cost. Plus, the statistics are from 2022, so they're surely higher now based on the increased inflation since then. By the way, America has had inflation every month since the beginning of the Biden administration. One of the feathers in Biden's cap that I'm sure the media will now credit to Kamala Harris is the $35 a month cost for insulin if you're a senior. Well, that's a good idea, it actually started with Donald Trump and has done little to offset the economic struggles of most Americans. So what's wrong with America's healthcare system that we get so little in return for our highest in the world investment? Granted, some of the countries on the list have a more socialized form of medicine, but America has that too. The bulk of us, however, use private insurance for healthcare coverage. And every year, the rates go up. Is our money disappearing at the insurance company level? Maybe some of it. Doctors tend to get paid well. Are they ripping us off? Probably not. Is it the administrative staff and the office space needed for examining rooms and equipment? I'm sure all of that costs money, but you don't see very many independent doctors' offices anymore. They all seem to be affiliated with some larger entity. Where I live, there are two of those entities. One is a private company and the other is a nonprofit. Now you might think, well, I'm going to the nonprofit if I want to save money on health care. But that might not be a better option. The nonprofit I'm talking about is affiliated with a college and claims that their research work makes them eligible for the nonprofit status. I had an MRI in one of their offices once, and they charged me almost four times the national average. They assured me my insurance would cover it. It didn't. And that's where the problem lies. Most major hospitals offer their own insurance plans and also accept insurance from other companies. But the price of identical procedures can cost a vastly different amount depending upon what insurance company you have. And you can get an even cheaper price if you don't use insurance. So it seems to be the dynamic between the hospitals and the insurance companies that's driving up the cost of medical care in the United States. In the case of my MRI, there was no price break, perhaps because I first submitted it to my insurance company and they wouldn't pay it. I don't know. You can't get answers from anybody. But as an example, a story in the New York Times from August of 2021 compared the prices of an MRI at the same location, but with different insurance companies. One insurance company was charged $1,019, while the other insurance company was charged $3,101. My MRI cost more than that. That was almost four and a half years ago. It's pitiful that America has the lowest life expectancy among most modern countries. American men have it even worse. Plus, we're spending more to get poorer results. Is it capitalism that's yielding this disappointment? I don't think so. After all, one of the hospital groups I mentioned is a nonprofit. How can they continue to claim that status is beyond me, but it's the middlemen between the hospitals and the insurance companies, as well as the hospitals having their own insurance companies, that are the reason for the high cost of health care in the U.S. The pharmaceutical companies have the same problem. Well, it's not a problem for them, it's a problem for us. There are too many hands in the pot. The hospitals and the pharmaceutical companies have built a new infrastructure of administrative people who are sucking the blood out of American medical patients. It's not capitalism. It's an abuse of the capitalist system and the people who depend on it. The Affordable Care Act isn't going to fix it either.

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You can hang your hat on that.

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Meanwhile, Vice President Harris is continuing her re-education tour. She's got a great lineup of opening acts like CNN, MSNBC, and the legacy media. They constantly back her up with vocals about her accomplishments and how she was never the border czar. Even though every one of them called her that for three and a half years. We'll get into that in a bit, but first, let's hear about some, well, all of her accomplishments as VP, as compiled by USA Today. Ironically, the first accomplishment USA Today listed is immigration. Now, you might be thinking, but Bob, didn't millions of illegal aliens cross our southern border since Joe Biden undid all the protections put in place by his predecessor on his first day in office? Wasn't Kamala Harris there? Wasn't she appointed to be the point person for immigration issues, especially those coming through Mexico from other countries? Yes. But USA Today doesn't mention that. They consider immigration to be an accomplishment of Kamala Harris because she got people involved in a group called Central America Forward, which is a public private organization meant to create economic stimulation in the area. It would be hard to tell if it's working. It was started in May of 2021. One could argue that the deluge of people coming to America from the Central American region has subsided a bit, but that may be because everybody who wanted to come to the U.S. is already here. Meanwhile, media companies that once called her the Border Tsar are now saying that if they did call her the Border Tsar, it was a mistake. But for three and a half years, Kamala was happy to wear the label because the crisis at the border was exactly what her progressive loyalists wanted. Now that she has to appeal to a broader citizenry, we're not allowed to say border czar anymore. Her next accomplishment is voting rights, according to the article. The evidence of this particular accomplishment was White House transcripts. In other words, she talked about voting rights in a meeting once. Accomplishment number three. Did I mention there are seven? Abortion. The story points out that she's the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion clinic. An even greater accomplishment was traveling to Minnesota in March. Other than that, the entire federal executive branch is unable to do anything and has done nothing other than visit an abortion clinic. All Kamala's talk about codifying Roe v. Wade is just that talk. The Biden administration has done nothing for abortion rights, and neither will a Harris administration. four Gun violence. According to USA Today, she's been working on this issue since September of last year. The crown jewel of her efforts is the Safer Communities Act. Here's what it does. Nobody under twenty one can legally buy a gun, provides mental health services to youth affected by gun violence, funds community-based violence intervention programs, which may or may not have anything to do with guns, and gives the DOJ more powers to bust gun traffickers. I'll point out that most guns used in crimes are purchased illegally anyway, so this law may have little effect on the goal of reducing gun violence. She gets some credit for the mental health portion of the Build Back Better Act, and she's somehow getting credit for expanding broadband connectivity because the infrastructure law included government investments to do so. Lastly, Kamala Harris is getting credit for Juneteenth. No, she wasn't part of the Union troops who brought word to slaves in Galveston, Texas that they were free. She was a co-sponsor of the bill to make it a holiday while she was a senator. So not a vice presidential accomplishment. That's everything USA Today could come up with to promote the accomplishments of the person running for president of the United States. That isn't a lot on which to build a reputation. In the meantime, the press will continue to praise her as the answer to America's prayers. Because the alternative is a guy who's already been president once. The sad part is how Kamala got pushed into this position in the first place. The Democratic powers that be showed Joe the exit because they knew he couldn't win, and the only option was the VP. Not even an open convention. The party that warns us of the end of democracy just put forth a candidate for president of the United States who has not been given a single vote for the office nor even the nomination. The hypocrisy of the entire circus, from the Democratic machine to the legacy media, is so obvious, yet so overlooked and accepted by those who are doing the warning. If you really want to save democracy, vote for the party that put forth the candidate the people approved, not some fill-in that circumvented the entire process of democracy itself, then immediately began spinning their behavior and their candidates' behavior so quickly that they resemble a toddler with icing on his face claiming he didn't eat the cake. The Democratic Party and the legacy media should be ashamed of what they're doing, but they're not. They're past the point of caring what Americans think. The Democratic Party no longer represents the people. They represent an agenda, and that agenda is more important to the party than the people they claim to represent.

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Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

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This week in 1735, long before there was a constitution or a bill of rights, New York weekly journal writer John Peter Zinger is acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York on the basis that what he had published was true. Here's a guy who emigrated from Germany when he was 13 and spent the first eight years of his life in America as an indentured servant. Part of that service was an apprenticeship for a printer. I spent 20 years as a printer of newspapers, and I can tell you that the best printing presses are German-made or German-engineered. Well, John eventually started his own printing business and printed the New York Weekly Journal. Now, the New York Weekly Journal was a political rag, like many we see today. It constantly criticized the governor of New York Colony, and the governor finally got fed up with it. Publisher Zenger was arrested, charged with libel, and spent ten months in prison before being brought to trial, according to Wikipedia. When he finally was put on trial, his attorney, Philadelphian Andrew Hamilton, argued that his client couldn't be guilty of libel if the stories in his paper were true, and that a jury should decide if they are. Well, the jury decided the stories were factual and found Zenger not guilty. Since then, libel cases are judged in such a way, and the ruling is widely considered a cornerstone of freedom of the press. Since then, libel laws have become so complicated that it's practically impossible for someone to be found guilty of it. The twisting of words, intent, and actual damage to the alleged victim all have led to a watering down of libel and slander laws for what was written and what was said. We counted on the press to police themselves, but as we all know, that ship has sailed. Speaking of ships, this week in 1943, on the same day President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill meet to discuss what would become known as D-Day. A former U.S. Ambassador's son is on a boat that gets cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. He is only on the boat in the first place because he used his political influence to not only join the Navy, but also to get stationed in the South Pacific. The young man's dad wasn't happy about his ambitions, but he wound up being a Navy officer, a lieutenant junior grade, which, if my memory is correct, is the same as a first lieutenant in the Army or the Air Force. Just one step up from the bottom of the officer ranks. Regardless, he was the commander of the patrol torpedo boat, and had a crew of twelve. Two would die instantly. Others were badly burned as the fuel exploded, covering the remaining part of the boat and the surrounding ocean in flames. It was in the middle of the night, and the eleven who survived would have to find land somewhere among a group of islands mostly controlled by Japanese forces. One of the men couldn't swim because of his injuries. The commander pulled him aboard what remained of the bow of the ship, then went and rescued two more of his crew. Eventually they would all cling to the wreckage and drift for twelve hours, until the sun was high in the sky. They decided to swim for it to an island about three and a half miles away, holding on to timber from a gun mount while kicking in unison. The man who was too badly injured to swim was towed along by the commander. It took four hours to make landfall. It wouldn't be their last swim, though. The first stop had no fresh water. The crew then swam another three and three quarter miles a few days later, tired and hungry. A swim by the commander and one of his crew to another island about a half a mile away yielded a Japanese canoe with some provisions inside, so it was paddled back to the rest of the men. After more than a week, with the help of local islanders, they were rescued in part because of a note scratched onto a coconut that made it to the right person. After hopping from island to island, carried by natives who were asked by the crew to be trusted to show a rescue team where they were. It was this week in 1943 that the eleven remaining crew of PT-109 was rescued, as well as the kid who pulled strings to get into the Navy and get stationed in a danger zone. The commanding officer of Patrol Torpedo Boat 109, John F. Kennedy. Injuries from the ordeal, as well as disease from a tropical island, would plague Kennedy for the rest of his shortened life.

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The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Contact the listening tube by calling 570-601-1101 or email thelistening tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Landed him in Indiana has provided him with a perspective not many of us can claim. I spoke with him about why he writes and how his unique background led to his views of society today. I have looked at some of your work, which is one of the reasons I felt compelled to ask you to chat with me. So I do appreciate you being here today. Your bio says you were in medicine for 30 years, and now you write about social and political issues. Did you start writing because you retired from medicine, or did you retire from medicine so you could write?

SPEAKER_04 22:39

I've been writing before I slowed down with my work. I'm semi-retired, so I'm still working, working part-time, uh anesthesiologist, and uh been writing now six, seven years.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

What inspired you to begin writing about these particular topics in the first place?

SPEAKER_04 23:02

Well, I had to get a lot of stuff off my chest, but the primary underlying reasons that I things to the point where they start bothering you enough, you want to you want to um share certain truths and facts and and see how they resonate. But I'm I'm really deeply saddened and concerned about what's happening in the struggling black communities, uh, which was the community of my origin in Los Angeles. It's sad, it's the persistence of uh certain levels of poverty and crime and academic underachievement in those communities.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

You certainly do have a rich history growing up in south central Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s, getting your doctorate, and then living in other cities around the country. Was there anything you missed about living in South Central LA, or were you were you happy to get out of that big city environment for a while?

SPEAKER_04 24:03

I was happy of it. I I left there in the 1980s. My intention was always to move back there, but that never happened. There were a lot of things about it I loved uh and wanted to wanted it to be my home when I finished medical school, but I never made it back there. As I pursued my career, it took me to other locations in uh San Francisco and Nashville. So yeah, I think there were things I have to do in the community, and so but I never made it back there.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Unfortunately, many people today consider they only know anything about South Central LA because of the Rodney King riots.

SPEAKER_04 24:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say that's not indicative of what that community is normally like. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like for you back then?

SPEAKER_04 25:01

Well, what it was like growing up was was good. I lived in a middle class neighborhood, and I think my experience is uh influenced by my socioeconomic status, I think living in a middle class neighborhood as opposed to living in in uh uh areas of of uh poverty that included uh the project of the projects and other neighborhoods that were experiencing some social issues as crime-ridden as the adjacent areas. So, yeah, Central LA is is not uh bad per per se. There were persistent problems that were never really dealt with as in the 70s and eight eighties, that even in my neighborhood, the presence of a police hunters on the weekends at night trying to hunt down criminals, we we would see that and hear that. So, yeah. I grew up in a in a two-parent household with father that worked six to seven days a week, keep a roof over and stay-at-home mom. And the junior high school I went to up to the um to the eighth grade, there were fights, particularly on the weekends, some of them racially motivated, uh, violence toward some of the Asian students in our school. It was hard to see, and a good lesson and a good life lesson, and how how um things can go bad in in communities. Yeah, so it was sad.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

You had mentioned the some of the issues were racially motivated. Is the the racial demographic today different from when it was when you grew up there, or or don't you know?

SPEAKER_04 26:48

I'm sure it's more Hispanic now. Yeah, there's a higher percentage of Hispanic there. Most of my cohort was um was motivated by educational achievement, but there was a moment of um juvenile delinquency that did that permeated through the school, bullying, violent things like that. So that was unfortunate, and that made it difficult for those of us who were trying to be more academically minded, but but that's how things were back then. And I'm worse now. After I left, yeah, crack cocaine came in there, I think, around the around eight, 1980 and thereabout, and that's the whole culture down there. I mean, I'm talking 50 years ago, and uh it's persisted that the leadership hasn't um made a significant impact on those issues.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Now, when it comes to your feelings about society today, what South Central Los Angeles values did you keep? And were there any you abandoned?

SPEAKER_04 27:50

That's a nice question. The values in my neighborhood, on my on my neighborhood, were um based on um academic pursuits, doing well in school, honest, being responsible, being dependable, perseverance. Those were the types of values that I learned in the black community that I came of from my parents, my uh elder mentors, some were in education, some were in law and in medicine. And so my father was a blue-color worker who had aspirations but didn't have the opportunity. You know, he grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. Uh, my mother as well. Um, so those are the values that I was fortunate enough to uh be instilled with and Dave Strell over the years.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

You say that your black role models were conservative and voted Democrat. Certainly there was less of a valley between the two ideologies than we have today. In fact, JFK could be considered by some to have been conservative uh based on on today's comparisons. Were any of those role models of which you speak people whose names we might recognize, or were they people in your community?

SPEAKER_04 29:15

Role models that I that inspired me were in my community was my uncle Raymond Jarrett, who owned a business and I worked for him. It was a janitorial uh service. So I worked for him as as a janitor. Uh my um my uncle Tolbert was an attorney and and um property owner in Los Angeles. And these were all black men. And the reason there they happen happened to be black because that was the neighborhood that I lived in. My ethnic heritage is is is black and half Jewish, and I was adopted into family when I was a baby in 1956. I grew up in that neighborhood, in that community, and so that's my ethnic identity. Uh, not that that matters too much, and I think it I think it could tension these days. Um, role models outside of the unity that I had were um Tom Bradley was a um UCLA athlete. He became uh Chief of Chief of Police Los Angeles, I believe, or captain. Then he went on to be mayor of Los Angeles, and um he was someone that I looked up to, and he you know he represents and my role models community all represent what I call conservative values, they all were Democrats, that's but they aspired and uh championed uh conservative and traditional ideas about education, family, good civic awareness, and um spiritual ideas such as gratitude and humility.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Did you ever wonder why they were conservative yet voted Democrat? Well, yeah, we were pretty young back then, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:09

At that time, the Republican Party didn't, and to a stent today, I guess, does didn't really connect with the sense of um need that the uh black community had. And of course, the Democrats championed that with the programs of the um Great Society, I guess, uh President Johnson's programs. And so there was a huge focus in the 60s and 70s when I was entering my teens. There was a huge focus on programs to uplift the community. And at that time, the Republicans, well, with with the fiscal principles of that the Republicans had policies. I think the Democrats um won the uh public relations battle for the heart and soul of the black community. I mean, that had been ongoing for a while, so it was traditional for the um in our community to be to vote for the Democratic Party because of for those reasons.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

One of your articles points out the dangers of political parties that caused our founding fathers to warn us about them. Our first president didn't have a political party. Alexander Hamilton, as mentioned in your article, said that factions would ruin us. Was he right?

SPEAKER_04 32:37

Yes. Factions, hyperpartisanism, uh partisanism, all that creates social tension and and disunity, and and Hamilton, I believe John Adams and Washington both saw the dangers of that. And that was from their particularly Hamilton's great education in history and that that he possessed. Hamilton and Madison, some governments and societies, you know, in antiquity, the Roman Empire, and and all the current uh systems of government, and they were well educated in the shortcomings of a uh poorly constructed government. So yeah, I think that I think that we're seeing their warnings, um turns come to fruition and on our the level of dysfunction that we have on our political system.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Other than political party, our government also divides us up in other ways. For example, the federal government has divided us into five specific races. In America's defense, we do have a lot of people from a lot of different places living here. But is it necessary to keep every track of us in such a way?

SPEAKER_04 34:05

I haven't thought of that. I think uh the the keeping track of us in in a certain way. Um I think that uh focus on uh on race, ethnicity, so-called special interest groups has served and in the past and is is today to uh more disunion and uh division and in our spirit as uh our common spirit as Americans. So it would be a huge uh transition for the government to to stop tracking people based on their ethnicness. I think uh that uh that's that's a uh not a utopian, but uh a fantasy. It would be good, my estimation, I imagine.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

That that separation of us by race has made the the word racist a dirty word. And it's often used to try to discredit someone. The word is also used to describe groups of people who share an ideology that may be based on race. For example, I saw signs at on TV at the Republican National Convention of protesters outside with signs that said stop racist Republicans. But the way I see it is that we're all racist because the definition of racism is merely separating ourselves by race. What happens after that has to be described differently, such as bigotry or prejudice or discrimination. We're trained by our government and our media and by the special interest groups of which you speak to be racist, I think, in in many situations. And it's that uh racism that leads to a lot of the other actions like discrimination and bigotry that we see today. Would it help if we stopped demonizing each other by calling them racists? Or if we just stopped dividing ourselves by race?

SPEAKER_04 36:32

That's we stop dividing ourselves by race. Well, I think if you're about a division of people of people by race um that is uh promoted and um documented and categorized by the by the government, that's one thing. It's human nature like to attract like and and like to be more comfortable with others uh with a similar appearance and uh co-heritage. The the experiment of America is the so-called melting pot is tremendously diverse, ethnically diverse, racially diverse population that is already problematic when it comes to um achieving a level of social tranquility when you have that much diversity. If you look at hummus societies like Japan or China, um Scandinavian countries, they still have a certain level of issues with crime and certain social issues. But the point I'm getting is that we already have a great level of ethnic diversity based on European immigrants, and then you add on top of that a large millions of ex-uh slaves that are now being that were integrated into America that was predicted to be a huge social issue, Lincoln and most other um leaders in that era, and we're still trying to sort that out. We're still trying to sort that out in America, and it's there's been advancement in the um quality of leave of life and the integration of uh into the American society, uh greater progress for African Americans, but there's been a huge retrogression, I believe, because of identity groups, and we're still the black community is still pounding the drum of uh racism is everywhere, systemic racism now, and the talk of white supremacy. So I think we haven't passed the uh ideology of the of the past, the triumphs of the civil rights rights movement, and the great effort for the federal government to improve the lives, to help improve the lives of African Americans based on opportunity and programs should have resulted in a lessening of a protest and resistance and blame that we still see coming out of the black community. And so, yeah, we've I've I've lost track of the other parts of your question. I think it's clear what I'm trying to say is that we need to move past race, we need to move past uh identity politics. Tired of having to say, well, if someone says, What are you? and I'm you and I'm well, I'm I'm Gary. You know, they say, Well, no, what are you? And then I'll say, Well, I'm I'm uh I'm an earthling, I'm I'm I'm a human being, uh I'm American, and I'm the proud son of Henry Walker. And well, okay, well, what race are you? Okay, then I'll talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

I would imagine someone who asks the question in that way automatically assumes that you're going to think of race when the question is asked.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

Yeah, and I don't like to say anymore, I don't like to say I'm black, you know, because my my my culture I grew up in was a was a black culture, but I grew up in an American culture. Uh now if I was brown browner, you know, if my pigmentation was darker, yeah, it's it's up to the individual to say what they are, you know, and in terms of their race. But I'm I'm black, I'm white, I'm American, whatever. I'm just tired of it, tired of race.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Now, me me too. You write that the failure of social and racial inequities is because of misguided leadership and political mismanagement. Is the misguided leadership coming from the politicians, or is it separate from the political mismanagement? Or are the is this misguided leadership coming from somewhere other than our politicians? And if so, who are they?

SPEAKER_04 41:20

I think it's coming from the politicians, Democratic, Democrat politicians. It's coming from uh the powerful and influential voices of the liberal mainstream media, the government. Yeah, I think and I think that we live in a culture that uh we live in a culture that's that has a certain level of guilt. I think what Shelby still wrote about the the loss of moral authority, uh America lost its its moral authority uh as a result of the revelations of a tremendous discrimination, Jim Crow laws during the cities, during the civil rights movement, the world saw the police uh acts with the peaceful protesters to Vietnam and certain atrocities, and the way we conducted that war. America lost its moral authority. And so there's been a mission, sure, and a guilt-laden mission that America's been on all of my life to to regain that authority, to regain that morality, and to be to do the good things. And the help that we've that the black community has received is uh has has been hurtful, in my opinion. The welfare of incentivized um single parents, and then the the breakdown of the of the family um is the proximate cause of gang culture, not just not poverty.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Thank you to Dr. Gary Walker for sharing his time and insight with us. You can read Dr. Walker's papers and subscribe to his newsletter on Stubstack at GaryF81.stubstack.com slash subscribe. That's Gary with two Rs. Or just Google Gary Walker Stubstack. The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2024. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for now and infinitum.