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The governor should be using his medical training and his whiteboard to inspire us all to be healthier.

I have a confession to make, which may come as an unwelcome surprise to my libertarian and conservative friends: I sincerely believeone of the functions of good governmentis to save people.

Now that Ive exploded the heads of approximately three out of 10 of my loyal readers, allow me to explain thatthe whole concept of social contract and human civilizationis to organize strength for the weak and help for those who are unable to help themselves by themselves.

In exchange for us agreeing to pay taxes and submitting to laws, the government looks out for us, so were not living like a prehistoric Booga Booga the Caveman whose entire responsibility for survival rests on him walking perimeter or hunting mammoths every day. Five thousand years of history reflects that civilization works best when it provides humans collective security against attack, agricultural stability/food supply predictability, and most importantly, sanitation and health care.

And when it comes to health care, government especially needs to set a positive example and leave the people a legacy for good. But let me tell you why I believe this.

My first exposure and acclimation to government was in my childhood. My father was a Medical Service Corps officer in the U.S. Air Force, so my health care was government health care for the first two decades of my life.

Not only that, but whenever I got in trouble at school, whenever I needed help someplace, or whenever I simply needed someone to show me support, my dad would show up for me, often dressed in his Class A uniform, and hed say to the adults that had authority over me, Im here for my son.

On one occasion when my dad couldnt attend my summer camp graduation ceremony, he sent all the junior officers from his HQ in Class B uniform to go on his behalf. When my school wondered why it looked like the graduation had awkwardly turned into some kind of national security special event, my dads executive officer replied, Were the Daniel de Gracia fan club.

Younger people today might scoffat 1980s action movieslike Rambo or Commando where the storyimplausibly always starts witha senior military officershowing up to go collect some civilian, but for me that was life as usual.

The point Im making with this humorous life story is that I learned at an early age that good government is supposed to show up when you need help, be attentive to negative developments and take action when necessary, and serve as an aspirational force in empowering people to be their best.

I learned about what good government can do because of my dad. Hawaii also knows what good government can do for peoplebecause of men like Prince Kuhio, and Gov. Josh Green, as a medical doctor, can really help the people in this same spirit of positive intervention.

So where do we start? Well, in Hawaii, Filipinos and Native Hawaiians in particular need urgent help from the government when it comes to their health. One thing we dont talk about is how both populationsare at greater risk for kidney diseasethan others, and chances are, many of the older Filipinos and Native Hawaiians in your circle are probablydependent on kidney dialysisservices.

Like so many other things in Hawaii that weve come to accept as routine, you probably grew up seeing aunties, uncles, parents, grandparents and others getting chronic kidney disease, heart disease, or diabetes as a progression of their aging. It just happens, right?

I got a shocking introduction to kidney problems after I got Covid last year, whenI found myself constantly sufferingfrom intense inflammation and painful, large swelling all over my body. In December, my labs showed that my estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), which isa measure of how well my kidneys were working, had dropped to a scary 86 mL/min/1.73m2. The average for a person my age should beat least 99 or higher.

I did the threat calculus in my head and began to wonder if Id be dying soon or need to be on dialysis. One of my cousins who got Covid lost a kidney, and I didnt want to be like him.

I dont subscribe to the now that youve got it, its downhill from here school of medical thought, so I researched it and found that kidney functionis impeded by high insulin levels. So, I had a theory: What if I naturally lowered my insulin production by intermittent fasting? Would that improve my kidneys?

Last week I got my most recent labs back, and three months later, my eGFR is now at 117. Ta-da! Not only that, my blood sugar, lipid profile, and many other key health markers are vastly improved. I also feel so much better and am almost pain-free in my body now. I thank God for this turnaround, but to be honest, I wish Id known earlier the science of kidney health to spare me some pain during the pandemic.

I was able to get better because I at least had some education to research alternatives. But what about those who dont? They need someone to show up for them.

Now what if Dr. Josh Green, that is, Gov. Green, were to put a special emphasis on educating the public many of whom are Filipinos like myself, or Native Hawaiians on how to prevent kidney damage, early? What if Green could use his medical background to set a positive example and educational initiative so that we have a healthy revolution in Hawaii?

What if Green were to show up to high schools and talk to people about how to eat healthy and live healthy, before they get sick as adults? What if Green were to use his daily whiteboard updates to give tips on kidney health, liver health and heart health, among others? Imagine if Green were to inject his medical and government presence in a big way into ordinary Hawaii life so that he sets an example for all of us to learn from and be inspired by.

Why am I saying this? Because we all need a hero in our lives, and Green, who Im sure is looking for a win and a legacy to be praised for, can start by helping Hawaii residents get healthier.

Want an easy win for good government in Hawaii? Our doctor-in-chief and governor can start by giving all of us a hero for health.

Civil Beats community health coverage is supported by the Atherton Family Foundation, Swayne Family Fund of Hawaii Community Foundation, the Cooke Foundation and Papa Ola Lokahi.

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Danny De Gracia: Dr.-Gov. Josh Green Should Be A Health Care Hero - Honolulu Civil Beat

Residents of Virginias 9th Senate District anchored in Richmond and eastern Henrico County will head to the polls Tuesday to vote for their new state senator. The election follows now-Rep. Jennifer McClellans election to Congress in February.

Republican Stephen Imholt a former government consultant who co-chaired the finance committee for the school board in Rockford, Illinois and Democratic Del. Lamont Bagby are running. Bagby has been a member of the House of Delegates since he was elected in a 2015 special election. Imholt lost an election for the state House as an independent against McClellan in 2015.

Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.

Voters are asked to bring an approved form of identification to their assigned polling place which can be checked online but may also sign a statement confirming their identity in order to vote. If a voter does not bring ID and is unwilling to sign such a statement, they may also cast a provisional ballot.

Anyone who is qualified to register to vote may do so Tuesday at their assigned polling place. Those who utilize same-day voter registration will cast provisional ballots.

Bagby is considered to be a heavy favorite in the Democratic-leaning district. McClellan most recently won reelection in 2019 over Libertarian Party candidate Mark Lewis by about 60% of the vote.

The person elected will serve out the remainder of McClellans term, which ends in January. Virginia's 9th Senate District for this election includes all of Charles City County, parts of Richmond City and portions of Henrico and Hanover counties.

A general election will be held using redrawn boundaries that include more of Richmond in November, along with all 139 other seats in the General Assembly.

See more here:
How to vote in Tuesday's special election in Richmond, Henrico ... - VPM News

The hit HBO show Succession is back for its final season. For us viewers, it means Sunday nights just got a lot more entertaining and, I must say, given the plot of the show disturbing.

If you haven't seen the show, it centers on the Roys, a dysfunctional family of billionaires jockeying for the reins of their aging father's multinational media and entertainment conglomerate, Waystar RoyCo. The Roys are a seriously messed up family. They're ruthless and callous and, despite their incompetence, they possess a Machiavellian penchant for double-crossing each other. Their family gatherings are awkward, to say the least.

At Planet Money, we view the world through the lens of economics. And so, for us, Succession isn't merely a riveting dramedy. It offers an inside look at the bizarre dynamics of a family business that eschews meritocracy and scientific management in favor of nepotism and toxic family politicking.

Our economy is populated by countless family businesses, and most, of course, aren't as spectacularly flawed as Waystar Royco. The economists Beln Villalonga and Raphael Amit write that the field typically defines "a family firm" as any company that is "under the control or significant influence of an individual shareholder (typically the founder) and/or his or her family." Some of the biggest companies in the world meet that definition, including Walmart, which is controlled by the Walton Family; Samsung; Volkswagen; Berkshire Hathaway; Koch Industries; Ford Motor Company; and, of course, what is perhaps the inspiration for Succession: News Corp, which is largely controlled by Rupert Murdoch and his progeny.

In fact, more than half of the world's companies, both privately owned and publicly listed, are family firms, according to Villalonga and Amit. The Wharton Global Family Alliance, a research center at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, estimates that around 35 percent of the Fortune 500 largest companies in the United States are family controlled. Family firms, the research center estimates, account for a whopping 64 percent of our nation's GDP.

So, yeah, family firms are pretty much everywhere. And a central problem they face is what to do after their founding patriarch or matriarch steps down. Researchers have said that "Succession is the ultimate test of a family business." That, of course, is the central test that faces ailing Logan Roy, the family patriarch who built Waystar Royco, in Succession.

In the real world, the heirs of a family firm have three basic options after their founding patriarch or matriarch steps down: they can sell the company and get rich quick.

They can keep ownership, but perhaps acknowledge their own limitations and outsource management to skilled outsiders.

Or they can chart an alternative path choosing to let nepo babies run the show. But the research on this nepotistic route isn't pretty. It suggests that keeping company management in the family as some of the Roys hope to do in Succession risks destroying the entire enterprise.

For a long time, economists have been perplexed as to why seemingly similar looking companies can vary so widely in their productivity. For example, economist Chad Syverson crunched data on 200,000 manufacturing plants in the United States, and he found that employees working at the top 10 percent of plants were four times more productive than those working in the bottom 10 percent. This gap is puzzling because one would think that the least productive companies would learn from the successes of the most productive companies. In a Darwinian capitalist economy, this gap should drastically shrink, at least theoretically.

[Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money's newsletter. You can sign up here.]

The Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom has come to view company management as the key to explaining persistent differences in productivity. Some years back, Bloom and John Van Reenen, of MIT, surveyed more than 10,000 manufacturing firms across the United States and Europe. They found that management practices were crucial to explaining company success or failure. And a really important determinant of good or bad management: whether nepo babies had hopped into the driver's seat.

"We find that firms that hand down management within the family have worse management practices, particularly those that hand it down to the oldest son," Bloom says. "They were managed extremely poorly and often ended up bankrupted by poor management practices."

Bloom says the typical story goes something like this: Someone founds a company and builds it up over 40 years or so. He or she "then hands it to their oldest son, only for them to slowly wither the company for the next 20 years." Just think about why that can be so dumb, Bloom suggests, paraphrasing something he once heard. "'If you wanted to win the 2040 World Cup, you would not pick the oldest sons and daughters of the 2020 team.'"

Of course, if you're a viewer of Succession, you're familiar with the fact that Logan Roy, the family patriarch, has no intention of handing the reins to the first of his line. His oldest son, Connor Roy, isn't really interested. He's more drawn quite unrealistically to a grandiose career in libertarian politics. It's his second oldest son, the drug-addled Kendall Roy; his daughter, the politically savvy Siobhan Roy; and his perverted youngest son, Roman Roy, who grasp the most for their father's throne.

For the last five years, we've been perched on the edge of our seats, trying to guess which of this trio of amoral backstabbing jerks will get the keys to their father's kingdom. Meanwhile, the wily old devil Logan has taken great delight in teasing us, pitting his offspring against each other in a kind of ornately gilded cage-fight.

From time to time, Logan has even made us and them think that, after all their trials and tribulations, none of the Roy kids will ultimately get to wear the crown. Judging by the economic research on family firms and the quality of the candidates in this particular contest that may well be the wisest decision he could make.

More:
Why Nepo Babies Are Bad For Business (Sorry, 'Succession') - NPR

Florida Governor Ron DeSantiss legislative crusade against Black history in Floridas K-12 curriculum is nothing short of a frontal assault on Black Americans sense of reality and identity. History in American education is not, as DeSantis suggests, an impartial assemblage of the cut and dried facts. It is, rather, the way we test and refine various narratives of our collective identity and national aspirationsand, crucially, interrogate the enabling fictions that make up the American dream. James Baldwin underlined the central fact that DeSantiss campaign against Black learning sidesteps during his 1965 debate with William F. Buckley Jr. at the University of Cambridge when he declared, The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro. Fifty-eight years later, Ta-Nehisi Coates reiterated the same point in his landmark book Between the World and Me: Historians conjured the dream.

By forbidding instruction in the countrys actual history, via everything from Floridas ban on critical race theory to the abandonment of advanced AP classes in African American history, DeSantis has reversed this foundational insight, conjuring the dream as state-sanctioned knowledge. Florida schools now operate under the mission to present students with a largely anodyne, conflict-free, and mythologized account of racial history as factand as the foundation of their civic identity.

This ideologically driven agenda gives the lie to DeSantiss frequent insistence that Floridas education standards require teaching Black history. In point of fact, the standards require no such thing; they categorize African American history as an elective. In other words, while schools may be mandated to offer such courses, no student is required to take them. This procedural dodge, like so many of DeSantiss pronouncements, is meant to preemptively disarm criticism: If he can make it seem that African American history is already required for all Florida students, the advocates of the woke sensibility DeSantis reviles will appear to be distorting the truth in the alleged service of their ideological agendas.

That was the whole point of DeSantiss high-profile press conference on the states teaching standards earlier this month, where he denounced the case made by his detractors as a hoax. They will say things like Florida does not want students to know that there was slavery in the United States, which is just an absolute lie, DeSantis said. Florida law does the opposite.

Well, not so much. Its true that a 1994 state law requires Floridas public schools to teach African American history, including the enslavement experience, abolition, and the history and contributions of Americans of the African diaspora to society. Floridas Department of Education lists six African American history courses that meet the requirements of the 1994 law, but none of these courses fall under the heading of core-curriculathe body of classes students must take in order to graduate from high school.

DeSantis is correct when he says that students will learn about enslavement if they enroll in the course. However, thanks to his moral-panic legislation specifying which versions of Black history pass muster in state schools, he has also ensured that students will not learn that white people were responsible for it, or that white people benefited from it and produced white children who inherited their wealth from the plunder of enslaved Black Americans. The upshot is a mind-bendingly ahistorical proposition: White supremacy did not empower white people with the belief they were sanctioned to enslave Black people. Rather, American racism was an outlying and irrational product of now-outmoded pseudoscientific beliefs and attitudes, which no longer play a central role in American race relations, if indeed they ever did.

As DeSantis explained, this flattened-out account of the countrys racial past was the objective behind his signature Stop WOKE legislation, HB 7, which he signed into law last year. What we did in that bill, DeSantis explained, we required the State of Florida schools to provide instruction about prejudice and racism through American history. He neglected to add, however, that the bill charges educators to handle this material under the prime directive of guaranteeing that no white students feelings are hurtor, as the bills sweeping language has it, to ensure students do not feel guilt, anguish, or psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.

What students are clearly empowered to feel, however, is that the whole awkward business of American slavery and its apartheid aftermath is firmly embalmed in the past: After stipulating that its permissible for Florida classrooms to explore how the individual freedoms of persons have been infringed by slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial discrimination, the Stop WOKE Act rushes to stress that students should also learn how recognition of these freedoms has overturned these unjust laws. Note first that the abstract formulation here absurdly bypasses the explicitly racialized foundation of slavery; Black people were not dispossessed, exploited, and killed by slavery so much as the individual freedom of persons was, most unfortunately, infringed. And likewise, Black Americans were not the agents of their own liberation under the demise of slavery and segregation; no, the impersonal and abstract recognition of these freedoms was the efficient cause here, a bloodless account of how history actually unfolds that would make even Hegel blush.

We are, in short, in the pedagogic world of right-wing agitpropwhich is the ultimate aim of DeSantiss education platform: to depoliticize actually existing Black history in the name of preserving the dreams core ideological precept of white innocence.

Its not hard to work out the implications of this counter-historical curriculum in the arena of todays multifront campaign to restore white impunity. By this same impersonal libertarian logic, white men can intentionally hunt and shoot down a Black teenageras Florida vigilante George Zimmerman did when he gunned down Trayvon Martin in 2011without white supremacy playing any part in the adjudication of the gunmans legal culpability. The ideological focus on individual freedoms will likewise automatically transpose the acute wealth gap separating white and Black America into the high-libertarian scheme of proper saving and investmentas opposed to the legacy of system in which Black Americans were themselves designated property, and thus denied fundamental human rights of self-determination and unobstructed social mobility. In short, students will be encouraged to believe that Black subjugation, the torture of the whip, and the hell of poverty wereand arenecessary torments that Black Americans simply must overcome in order to finally realize for themselves the spoils of the American dream.

In line with all this reasoning, the only time Floridas social studies standards refer to white people as a race is to exalt white allies in the civil rights movement, advising teachers to have their classrooms assess the building of coalitions between African Americans, whites, and other groups in achieving integration and equal rights. In other words, while the mere mention of past white culpability for, and complicity in, American slavery and its legacies would create severe emotional distress and dislocation for white students, they still can claim the heroic narrative of playing a leading role in dismantling the outmoded regime of Black repressioneven though this, too, is an assertion squarely at odds with actual history.

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Add to this DeSantiss repudiation of AP Black history instruction for alleged indoctrination in Black resistance and critical race theory and you have a version of Black history that dogmatically minimizes Black experience and historical agency. This vision is part of DeSantiss broader effort to adopt the teaching standards of fundamentalist Hillsdale College in Florida schools, via public-funded charter institutions. DeSantiss alliance with Hillsdale, indeed, predates his governorship, going back to his tenure in Congress. Hillsdale now has the authority to review Floridas middle-school civics curricula in conjunction with the commissioner of education and the Koch-funded Bill of Rights Institute. Another group charged with such reviews is the Florida Center for Joint Citizenship, which is a partner of the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida, schools that both receive generous Koch funding.

The tight network of right-wing policy entrepreneurship supplies the rhetorical and intellectual artillery for DeSantiss school wars. You can see its influence, for example, in the way the Florida Department of Education took issue with the AP courses proposed inclusion of the Movement for Black Lives in its instruction materials. Department officials claimed that the aims of Black Lives Matter include eliminating prisons and jails, ending pretrial detention, and concluding the war on Black trans, queer, gender non-conforming, and intersex people.

Its also why DeSantis took up the same rallying cry at his March 8 press conference. You just tell me whether you think this is something that is appropriate for an African American history course, DeSantis asked, reading aloud this description of the now-rejected Queer Studies unit the original AP Black history framework: We have to encourage and develop practices whereby queerness isnt surrendered to the status quo of race, class, gender and sexuality. It means building forms of queerness that reject the given realities of the government and the market.

While such language may be imprecise and rhetorically overblown, the objectives in question are indeed of a piece with the struggle for racial justice, as any number of queer Black Americans will readily attest. But the whole point of DeSantiss curriculum-scrubbing agenda is to deny such people a voice, a hearing in public lifeor, indeed, an identity.

Neither they, nor the larger narrative of Black liberation, have any place in the states own preferred indoctrination narrative, grounded in the sacred shibboleths of individualist achievement. Florida law requires the State Board of Education to develop or adopt Stories of Inspirationa curriculum designed to inspire future generations through motivating stories of American history that demonstrate important life skills and the principles of individual freedom that enabled persons to prosper even in the most difficult circumstances.

And while queerness has no place in the DeSantis-ized version of Black history, laissez-faire capitalism most assuredly does, in spite of capitalisms largely adversarial role in the Black freedom struggle. The African American History task force, an organization created by the 1994 law to bolster the effort to ensure the history, culture, experiences, and contributions of African Americans is taught in Floridas K-12, ensured that the states African American Instructional Standards are teeming with the fables of Black capitalism. The task force enjoins teachers to have students analyze the advantages of capitalism and the free market in the United States over government-controlled economic systems, while also rehearsing the dogmas of classical laissez-faire economics: Students will analyze the disadvantages of authoritarian control over the economy (e.g., communism and socialism) in generating broad-based economic prosperity for their population.

The libertarian civics mandate yields a prim and didactic vision of Black success that is quite something, but a far cry from history:

The economic and human resources of African Americans in the United States of America are significant. African Americans, since Madame C.J. Walker, have been millionaires and today there are many millionaire athletes, businesspeople, performers, and T.V[.] personalities like Oprah Winfrey. The exploration of economic contributions is important in understanding the roles of African Americans in American society.

There you have it: The Black struggle for justice, freedom, and equality culminates in the billionaire figure of Oprah Winfrey, a perfect market avatar of the American dream of individualist uplift. The version of Black history that Florida students will now be encountering in schools overseen by fundamentalist ideologues calls to mind Hannah Arendts grim assessment of how totalitarian propaganda prompts people to believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. Thats yet another lesson that wont be taught in a Florida school.

See the original post here:
A Dream and a Lie: Ron DeSantiss Twisted Race Pedagogy - The Nation

On a party-line vote, a Missouri House committee on Wednesday rejected a request for a recount in a legislative district decided by 99 votes in the November election.

Democratic members of the Special Committee on Election Contests voted against the decision to deny a recount. Majority Republicans said they opposed the recount because the challenger, Democratic nominee Cindy Berne, did not allege any irregularities in her loss to Republican Adam Schwadron in the 105th District in St. Charles County.

We have tried in every way we could to evaluate what has taken place, said Rep. Dan Stacy, R-Blue Springs, who served as the chairman of the committee.

Under state law, a candidate who loses by less than 1% of the vote has the right to ask for a recount. The margin in the 105th District was 0.91% of the 10,951 votes cast. Schwadron received 5,404, or 49.35%, to Bernes 5,305, or 48.44%, with Libertarian candidate Michael Carver picking up the remainder.

In its report to the House, the committee focused on the issue of irregularities, noting that Berne had not alleged any. Various state statutes, the report states, indicate that the committee has discretion to turn down the request if the person contesting the election hasnt shown that there is uncertainty about enough votes to potentially change the outcome.

Rep. Kimberly-Ann Collins, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said Berne deserved a recount even without an allegation of issues with the vote.

That is not what we should be focused on, Collins said.

The statute on recounts where the margin is less than 1% says the losing candidate shall have the right to a recount, Collins noted.

The gist of this is that they are owed a recount because it is less than 1% and that is whats in statute, she said.

Republicans on the committee pushed back, saying that the recount is discretionary when there are no other issues raised about how the election was conducted.

It should be used sparingly when there are not irregularities to point to, Rep. Peggy McGaugh, R-Carrollton and a former county clerk.

Stacy said extensive research showed that other statutes describing the circumstances triggering a recount and governing the power of the committee gave it the ability to turn down Bernes request.

I believe we have been very thorough, Stacy said. I feel we have followed the statute.

The Missouri Constitution makes the House the sole judge of election contests for its members. There is no right to appeal the committees decision to the courts.

If a recount had overturned the result, it would have been the fourth seat picked up by Democrats from the 2022 election. There are 52 Democrats and 111 Republicans in the 163-member House.

See the original post:
Missouri House committee rejects call for recount in close St ... - Missouri Independent