The View from Right Field

Covid and Charging More for Not Getting the Vaccine

Some governmental units and companies are requiring their employees to get a Covid vaccine shot: staff at nursing homes and hospitals; teachers; and more.  Delta Airlines is taking a different approach: they’re adding a $200 monthly surcharge on the cost of health insurance plans for employees who won’t get a shot.¹  The reaction seems to be: that’s a great idea.  After all, if you get Covid and have to go to the hospital, which is a lot more likely if you don’t get a shot, it costs a lot of money. 

I understand the reaction.  We need to get people vaccinated.  Requiring them to get a shot.  Adding a surcharge to an employee’s health insurance premium.  Whatever it takes.  This is a pandemic.

November 2, 2016 Seems Like Such a Long Time Ago

When we were in Portland, Oregon, in 2017, to see family, we did what people visiting Portland normally do.  We drove 100 miles south to Eugene to see the Eugene Emeralds, then a Cubs farm team.  While there, I bought this tee shirt:

Nancy Pelosi Criticizes Representatives’ Trip to Kabul While Apparently Forgetting Her Trip to Damascus in 2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been very critical of House members Seth Moulton, a Democrat, and Peter Meijer, a Republican, for their visit on Tuesday to the airport in Kabul.  Representatives Moulton and Meijer said they flew in “crew-only” seats on a plane with empty seats.  Among other things, Speaker Pelosi said, "It's not just about them to Afghanistan, going into the region, there's a cost on our resources as well.  This is deadly serious."

I don’t know if Representatives Moulton and Meijer should have gone, though I do understand their desire to see what was going on for themselves.  In any case, I find Speaker Pelosi’s criticism of the visit a bit funny.  She may not remember 2007 when she led a group to Syria and met with President Bashar al-Assad, even though President George W. Bush said she should not do so.  Because of Syrian support for Hezbollah and interference in Iraq, among other things, the United States had a policy of not meeting with President Assad.  But Speaker Pelosi felt she could decide for herself what was right and the heck with President Bush’s policy.  

After Afghanistan: What Next for American Foreign Policy?

After the collapse in Afghanistan, the questions for many are: Why did it happen so quickly¹ and why we weren’t prepared.  Which are good questions.  But I have a different question: What’s next for American foreign policy?  In that regard, I was surprised by the very negative reaction from Europe to our quick and unilateral pullout from Afghanistan.  One might have expected concern from Asia, but the comments from Europe were very interesting.  Here are excerpts from an article Wednesday’s Financial Times (behind the FT paywall):

“European allies had hoped Joe Biden’s election to the US presidency would bolster Nato’s relevance after Donald Trump’s acrimonious years.  Washington’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan is prompting a rethink.

The Afghan People Deserve an Apology for What Joe Biden Said Yesterday

At some point in the future, I hope we have a president decent enough and honorable enough to apologize to the Afghan people and the Afghan armed forces, for comments made by Joe Biden yesterday.¹  In defending his decision to leave Afghanistan and the way we are doing it, President Biden said:

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. …

We gave them every tool they could need. …  

We gave them every chance to determine their own future.  What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.”

“An Indelible Stain on His Presidency”

That was is what Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who was ambassador to Afghanistan under Barack Obama,¹ said of Joe Biden’s policy in Afghanistan a week ago.  As I said on Saturday, Donald Trump deserves much of the blame for how our involvement in Afghanistan ended.

However, President Biden is the one who has been in office for the last seven months.  He is the one who could have changed or modified the policy former President Trump set (he did it in many other areas).  He is the one who could have prepared better for what actually happened, as opposed to what he hoped would happen.  Ultimately, he wanted to leave Afghanistan, and he made the final decision for us to leave as we did.  As Ambassador Crocker said, that decision and what has happened is, and will be, “an indelible stain on his presidency.”
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¹ As well as ambassador to many other countries under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

We Have Been Reduced to Almost Begging in Afghanistan

As the collapse happens in Afghanistan, the United States has been, in effect, reduced to begging the Taliban not to attack our embassy in Kabul.  While the sub-headline in The New York Times talks of our “demand” that the Taliban not attack our embassy there, what we really said was, in effect, if you attack our embassy and we have to close it, we won’t give you money after the war is over

While Joe Biden doesn’t seem to care what happens in Afghanistan, he very much wants to avoid a helicopter-off-the-embassy-roof end to our time there.  That, and apparently only that, would be an unacceptable end of our war in Afghanistan.

60th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall

Sixty years ago today, the Berlin Wall went up.  It started with barbed wire and wound up with concrete, killing strips, and attack dogs.  The Berlin Wall seems out of date and out of history, at least out of the history we talk about today.  But for those who were alive during it, it was what history was about.

I am not going to write a lot about it here.  I have done that before.  You can find a post about the building the Wall here and pictures of the Wall here.  You can find posts about the fall of the Wall by looking in the “Berlin” subhead in “Categories” section in the right column.

Climate Change, Extreme Weather, Carbon Limits – and Adapting

If it is true the extreme weather we have been having is a result of climate change, i.e., putting too much carbon into the atmosphere, then two things:

First, my suggestion with respect to putting less carbon into the atmosphere is a carbon tax, especially a carbon tax that would be refunded to everybody equally, on a per capita basis.  A carbon tax would probably be one of the quickest, most effective, and least costly ways to cut carbon.  A cap-and-trade system might work, too.  Heavy government regulation is a less good option.  It wouldn’t work as well, and it would be slower.¹

Reality Check for @Cubs Fans: Trading Riz, KB, and Javy Was the Right Thing to Do

With trades of Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Baez (for more on that, see here), the Cubs are getting, to paraphrase Harry Doyle, “JUST a bit” of criticism.  A few reality-check comments.

1. Lots of fans think the Cubs should have kept all three of them and, I guess, signed them as free agents in the off-season.  Which basically means paying each of them more than they would get from any other team.  In other words, the Cubs should have signed Rizzo for more than any other team would have paid him; the Cubs should have signed Bryant for more than any other team would have paid him; and the Cubs should have signed Baez for more than any other team would have paid him.  Nobody else would have signed all three of them for the top dollar they could have gotten individually, but that’s what the Cubs were supposed to do.