The Penn Square Post, part of the Penn Square Press LLC, is a news and commentary forum for a variety of topics related to life in the 21st Century.
Front and center are issues concerning Health Care Policy and Delivery in the US. Edited by Thomas Godfrey, a health care consultant and former doctor and administrator with a large established delivery and insurance organization, this section tackles the critical developments making news in a slightly different perspective, hopefully stimulating an exchange of ideas. Tom has had extensive experience practicing on the front lines as well as planning for highly specialized care. For years he was involved in how doctors communicate with their patients and each other.
We will also be extending our platform to other topics, the first two being classical music and orchestras in the US from Curtis Rittenhouse, a former Music Academy head and program annotator.
Later we will be adding a section aligned with mysteries, one of America’s favorite forms of fiction and entertainment which will be hosted by George P Barber.
Our eventual goal is to expand to be a public forum for the things that make life worth living —-instead of the annoying junk that is clogging up the airways and internet each day. How many people really care about the fortunes of the Kardashians on a daily basis? Why are they everywhere in the news?
This calendar year we will also expand our discussion to the books the Press will start to publish. One, a new mystery, has just appeared.
In the three months since we began publishing the Post, we have learned that progress is slow and unpredictable. We want readership participation. Please join in.
If you like what you read, please tell others. We know you have a lot of choices but we hope you will come to feel you have a home here at the Post, located in the US state where freedom of religion and expression of thought was a founding ideal.
The Publishers
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Thank you for the compliment. Tom
Some truly nice and useful information on this internet site, besides I think the style and design has got wonderful features.
Thank you for your positive opinion. Please let me know if there are topics you would like to see explored. I have put up several new posts in the past few days. I am looking to upgrade the design in the near future. Any suggestions? Tom
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Thank you so much. I put up a new piece this morning. I hope you like it. Tom
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Your words of encouragement are greatly appreciated. I hope you will make a return visit soon. Tom
Great news. I am very happy to hear that. I hope you will continue to visit. Any subject you would like me to explore? Tom
Thank you for your positive feedback. Tom
Thank you for your positive feedback. TG
Thank you for visiting. We will be posting agin soon. TG
Thank you. I can’t help making note of your on line name. How did you choose it? TG
Many thanks for your comments. TG
Respect to website author , some good entropy. “It’s always too early to quit.” by Norman Vincent Peale.
Thank you for words of encouragement. I hope you will return. TG
Thank you. I try very hard not to be boring. TG
thank you for the compliments. Tg
I appreciate the compliment. TG
Of course. Very happy you like what you see. Tom
Thanks for the compliment. I think we have been fairly active. Please check Post #51 for more details. TG
Thank you for your encouraging comments. Please return again. TG
Your kind remarks are greatly appreciated. Hope you will become a Post reader. Tom
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Many thanks for your kind reply. TG
Thanks for your kind words. Tom
I think the statue pictured is very reflective of what I think this post’s purpose is. To have intelligent, constructive and reflective thought. I would really like to hear your thoughts on the dysfunction that this country is in. Both my parents, one more so than the other, grew up in the Soviet Union. They, my parents, often said the Soviet Union was the most Capitalistic and the US most Socialistic functioning systems. We claimed victory when the “communist”, the USSR, fell apart. Before that time, the Soviets were certain the capitalistic system would fall. Is our time coming? USSR never had “true communism”, far from it. I think we are learning, or hoping, to not have “true Capitalism”. If true and ideal Communism were to prevail, there would be class equality, insightful understanding of social and ecomonic responsability to one another – this was obviously not the prevailing system in USSR. If true and ideal Capitalism prevails we have monopolies, derivitives and current health care system. In the Soviet Union, education was trumped as a national priority. In the US, company profits are trumped as national priority. Over the last 50 years, this has trampled education. We speak of freedom. I seriously doubt many Americans understand that word. We speak of Democracy and actively try to export it to the world. There is no Democracy in US. US was founded on great principles and ideal of active citizenry. Our system will fail if we do not have each and every citizen active to assure their well being and that of the nation. For that, we need educated citizens. I feel ignorance serves Capitalism, destroys Democracy. Education would allow Democracy to thrive and temper Capitalism. Sorry, got carried away a bit.
I have spent some time thinking over your comments and your request for me to comment further. I am flattered, but this is a tall order.
I agree that Americans take too much for granted and see themselves with rose-covered glasses. The country has produced many great people but I choke on American Exceptionalism demands. So many great contributors have been children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. The old American aristocracy seems to be doing their best work on the golf course or at the 19th hole these days. Our civilization does not advance when they get off the course and into the political arena.
Our democracy is not pure; it is a representative democracy, at best. Keep in mind that it is hard to represent those who are constantly tuned out on major issues, and only enter the discussion when prodded. Marx said religion was the opiate of the people. That’s because he lived before the era of ESPN. Popular culture has anesthetized much of the population.
Staying informed is not a current American characteristic. We seem to assume that it really doesn’t matter all that much who is guiding the country, the state, the city, the district. Things will always work out. That’s lazy and naive.
When those in power stop representing the thoughts of their constituents, they begin trying to shape and manipulate them to their own ends, e.g. hedgemony and continued power. Now with huge amounts of money available to buy friends and lots of propaganda, the situation is even more frightening. Elected officials become indebted to their moneyed friends and do their bidding. That would seem to indicate that we are drifting into an oligarchy, where a small group of people call the shots. They either get legislation they demand or paralyze the process when it goes against their interests. The country feels to me in worse shape now than at any time I can remember, even the late 1960’s with its burning cities and assassinations. .
There has always been a strong streak of anti-intellectualism in this country. I have written about this, and it always bothered me because our competitive edge was our strong university system and the product it produced. Educated people are not always right, but they are right more often than uneducated folks. We did not get to the moon because of a great native gut instinct. As our education numbers in this country roll back because of the increasing costs of higher education and the increasing failure of our secondary school systems, we face the risk that it will be easier for special interests to manipulate large parts of the electorate.
I also think history discloses that we need people of courage to stand up to those who would manipulate us for their own selfish ends. Right now, no one wants to be confrontational. We are still too comfortable and too well fed. I expect gridlock and dysfunction to continue until the level of discomfort becomes so high that someone somewhere has the courage to stand up and oppose the current forces of un-enlightened self-interest. It will require the electorate to follow. I think they were ready for this in 2008, but Obama proved far more cautious than I expected and has lost a lot of good will.
Right now everybody is keeping their head down, trying to avoid trouble, parroting the party line that seems safest. If we drift any farther to the right, we will have an oligarchy in this country and individual freedoms will be constrained. That means probing questions do not get asked. History tells us that this is never the best form of government and it usually ends in chaos, if not revolution. The examples of this are too numerous mention. The oligarchs never see themselves as a problem. That’s what makes it worse. I am always amazed at people’s ability to rationalize almost anything they do, regardless of how heinous. Start with Germany in 1930 if you want to test the validity of my argument.
Back to you.