Trump's most recent comment about wanting to reduce testing, made just before boarding Marine One, made it clear that as weird as his reasoning is, he is serious about it.

According to Google nobody online thought of that headline. Therefore I hereby claim credit.

Jump to 1:30



Can you imagine those words coming from Trump's mouth? I can't.

How is it that a country of 5 million can have a leader like that when our nation of 331 million winds up with Trump?

There's dispute over when medical insurance should pay for a coronavirus test.

Why should anyone have to pay anything for a coronavirus test? Why should their medical insurance have to pay for it?

The test does nothing for the person receiving it. If that person is infected then they'll get sick and need medical care, but there's really nothing that can be done in advance for those who test positive aside from measures meant to protect others from becoming infected, such as isolation.

It's society as a whole that benefits from testing. The results determine when isolation of infected persons is needed and they help determine when area lock-downs and other measures should be enacted in an attempt to contain the spread, so why should the only person who receives no personal benefit from the test be the one responsible for paying for it? That makes no sense.

This data comes from The Congressional Research Service Juneteenth: Fact Sheet, which is referenced in this CNN article. I imported the data into a spreadsheet to sort and analyze it.

In order of recognition:
State Year
1 Texas 1980
2 Florida 1991
3 Oklahoma 1994
4 Minnesota 1996
5 Delaware 2000
6 Alaska 2001
7 Idaho 2001
8 Oregon 2001
9 Pennsylvania 2001
10 Iowa 2002
11 California 2003
12 Connecticut 2003
13 Illinois 2003
14 Louisiana 2003
15 Missouri 2003
16 Wyoming 2003
17 Colorado 2004
18 New Jersey 2004
19 New York 2004
20 Arkansas 2005
21 Kentucky 2005
22 Michigan 2005
23 New Mexico 2006
24 Ohio 2006
25 Kansas 2007
26 Massachusetts 2007
27 North Carolina 2007
28 Tennessee 2007
29 Vermont 2007
30 Virginia 2007
31 Washington 2007
32 South Carolina 2008
33 West Virginia 2008
34 Nebraska 2009
35 Wisconsin 2009
36 Indiana 2010
37 Mississippi 2010
38 Alabama 2011
39 Georgia 2011
40 Maine 2011
41 Nevada 2011
42 Rhode Island 2012
43 Maryland 2014
44 Arizona 2016
45 Utah 2016
46 Montana 2017
47 New Hampshire 2019
Hawaii Not recognized
North Dakota Not recognized
South Dakota Not recognized

I noticed an error in The Congressional Research Service document. It says:


It should say "46 other states" for a total of 47. The paragraph was probably written before New Hampshire was added last year.

I can see the red states of North and South Dakota not being on the list, but Hawaii needs to get busy so that a blue state doesn't wind up in last place!

In addition to racism, the problem, as I see it, is that it's difficult to convict police officers. Apparently it's much more difficult than convicting regular citizens, largely due to the influence of police unions.

This is exactly the opposite of the way it ought to be. Instead of holding police officers to lower standards, they should be held to higher standards. An elite class of law enforcement officers should be created who voluntarily waive many of the rights that ordinary citizens enjoy, and subject themselves to swifter justice and more severe penalties when they betray the public trust. They should be held personally responsible for making sure their body cameras and other means of oversight are always in place and operational in order to ensure, for their own sake, that they can prove their innocence in cases where they're accused. In the absence of the required oversight measures they should be assumed guilty until proven innocent. This elite class should aspire to a reputation of pride and superiority over ordinary police officers, in the spirit of The Untouchables.

This could start out of as an experiment conducted by some relatively small community, and as the ranks grow, those communities that decline to follow might ultimately be assumed by the general public to have corrupt and untrustworthy police, thus pressuring them to join.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...

(On the other hand, maybe I am the only one. )

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