Finneran: Flotsam And Jetsom

Friday, February 19, 2016

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Some thoughts on the American carnival, 2016—

• I’m already very tired of Kanye West and his dopey wife. Can I get an “Amen”?

• “The Bachelor” television show is a monument to self-degradation. Reducing the mystery of human love and the critical seriousness of marriage to a vapid television contest is beyond belief. The contestants have to be the dumbest people in America. Have they no decency? Have they no self respect? Are their parents terminally embarrassed? Or are they too morons? What a horrid American spectacle.

• The National Football League is a low-grade, no taste, money-grubbing machine. One can love the game, the athletes, the speed, the skill, and the strategies and still recognize how utterly gross the League has become. Super Bowl halftime shows are capital V for vulgar exhibitions. Would any reasonably thoughtful parent allow a son or daughter to watch the grinding gyrations and listen to the lyrics? One hopes not. The League of course looks the other way while sliding the cash into their greasy pockets. No taste, no class, no decency.

• The League’s multi-decade denial of concussive injury to its players---its employees---is now truly exposed. And in predictable “rich sportsmen” fashion, the owners have proposed to throw a few bucks into a collective pot for the hundreds of physical and mental cripples they’ve left behind. Spare me the nonsense of the teams’ community commitments and philanthropy. Call it what it is—propaganda and hush money.

• America’s best attorneys will force changes in post-career compensation as well as in rules, equipment, and medical treatment, all such changes being long overdue. Even then, fewer and fewer parents, including knowledgeable former players, will allow their children to play the game.

• A truly great headline- “Islamic State Cuts Perks Amid Budget Crunch”. Wow. Who knew? The ISIS Caliphate apparently resembles a lot of Western governments……….too much spending and too little revenue. It’s never been a recipe for sustained success. The “perks” in question are salaries, Snickers, and energy drinks!! I recall some video footage of smart bombs and missiles being used to blow up warehouses of cash as well as oil tanker trucks and pipelines. Let such target practice continue………

• Dangerous curve ahead---there’s a big collision about to occur between posturing politicians and life-saving scientists. The world very suddenly sees the need to develop a Zika vaccine as soon as possible. Scientists and researchers around the globe race to their laboratories in an effort to solve Nature’s latest deadly puzzle. The posturing candidates want to put price controls on medicines. Something has to give---we will never find the cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s, or other diseases without massive investment. In America those investment dollars are put up privately by investors who take on the risk in the hope of making a good return. Would you rather have D.C. bureaucrats doing this? I would not. I like the incredibly creative machine of private investment in search of medicines and cures. As for those foreign countries who threaten patents and impose price controls, might the pandering candidates insist on fair-share pricing as an essential element of all foreign trade? Why should American consumers bear the entire burden of expensive discovery and innovation? Let those countries who demand the medicines for their people pay part of the cost of such discovery.

• The “conventional wisdom” of the political world has been wrong about everything this year. Wrong about Hillary. Wrong about Bernie. Wrong about Jeb. Wrong about Trump. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s been an amazing year. And I have absolutely no idea what’s likely to happen next.

• I hope that I’m not the only Democrat offended by the celebratory dancing on Judge Scalia’s grave. Our politics grow increasingly rancid. The country once embraced standards of decency and respect for a family in mourning. Scalia was a good judge who refused to see “penumbras” which do not exist. Rather than engage in fictions, he thought that the American people themselves should decide the controversial cultural issues of the day, rather than 9, or even 5, unelected judges. He deferred to the legislatures and executives of the states, subject of course to the Bill of Rights. In that regard he was much more respectful of “democracy” than his critics. May his family have the courtesy of respect for their loss. And may he rest in peace.

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.

Kanye West photo courtesy of Wikipedia