Do I go to Liturgy this morning? It is an hour off, but I am getting light-headed.
I finished revising “The Unintended Consequences of Art” yesterday. After that Iw ent off to Walmart. When I got back here, I got off the computer and started reading and started to fall asleep. Off to bed, thinking I would sleep the night away. That was around 8 PM. Only I was awake at midnight.
It has been over 12 hours since I ate. Liturgy requires fasting. This might be causing my lightheadedness.
I did not go to church on Sunday. My driver was ill and I was having a resurgence of pain in my posterior. Thinking I needed to do something constructive, I worked on “The Unintended Consequences”. I was not writing from scratch, so I expected to get the thing done. Nope. I remained lethargic all day. I had this same problem this past Thursday and Friday.
Saturday I did get to Liturgy, Payless for groceries, and then nothing much done for the rest of the day but a few pages of “The Unintended Consequences”. MW called as I was applying an ice pack to my problematic area.
Another reason why living in Indiana sucks: Hicks Commentary: The Anti-Philanthropy Monopolists of Indiana.
At the same time, Indiana’s five largest nonprofit hospitals earned net income of more than $1.8 billion. These were: IU Health ($1.13 billion), Parkview Health ($279.3 million), Ascension St. Vincent ($250 million), Franciscan Health ($45 million) and Deaconess Health ($109.8 million).
To add insult to injury, these hospitals received donations from in-state residents and philanthropies that range from $101.7 million to $121.7 million. After all, they are “nonprofits.”
My favorite example of this is in Muncie, where the philanthropic community proudly reported that in 2023 it donated $21 million to causes within the county. In that same year, IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital reported $58 million in net income.
Creating a local monopoly unfettered by state enforcement of antitrust laws is a great gig.
***
One piece of good news is that the Indiana legislature is slowly taking them to task on these problems. But, they continue to engage in anticompetitive practices at a scale and pace that would’ve made John D. Rockefeller blush. In fact, when I teach two chapters of monopolization and antitrust, I’ve substituted Indiana’s hospitals for the textbook case of Standard Oil v. U.S.
That 1911 case saw Rockefeller’s company sued for vertical foreclosure (like buying up physician practices), predatory pricing (like undercharging competitors to run them out of business) and secret rebates to suppliers (like facility fees, anti-steering clauses in hospitals or turbo-charging list prices). This case set the stage for antitrust enforcement that seems to be dormant in Indiana.
It’s the best classroom example of anticompetitive behavior in America today, and that’s a damning fact about Indiana.
My mother's mother once told me Woodrow Wilson was the greatest President. Her father was elected Ripley County Clerk in 1912; I have assumed he ran as a Wilsonian. I had to read a biography in college; the author I have forgotten, but the book was short. Gore vidal also did his bit to diminish Wilson. My views have changed; my admiration is far more qualified than my grandmother's. Points for the League and anti-trust; demerits for segregating DC, for his arrogance, and for persecuting Debs. American Heritage just published Woodrow Wilson Reconsidered; which lays out succinctly why Princeton needed to take his name of its institutions. Important, yes; not great in the sense of living up to our better angels.
Though he stood athwart it over his long career as a political scientist and through both of his presidential elections, the great civil rights advance of the Anthony Amendment ranks also as a defining element of Wilson’s legacy. The amendment’s ultimate success shines more brightly for having overcome his stubborn opposition, and the racist motive that lay behind it.
This, Wilson’s greatest moral failure, set twentieth-century America on a tragic course that we in the present day still struggle to correct. Long after his death, as his grievous faults come into focus alongside his positive achievements, the schoolmaster president continues to teach us.
Iran and the Revolution by Homa Katouzian review – how the Islamic Republic was born hits on a point that I think has been forgotten about Iran:
All revolutions are accompanied by a degree of self-deception: without that, they would never succeed. Katouzian gives the best description I have seen of the odd alliance between the rebarbative ultra-conservative clergy and the leftwing Iranian intellectuals who managed to persuade themselves that Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Tehran would open the door to democracy, liberty of expression and true socialism. “Why are you so bloody optimistic?” I asked a British-educated former member of the Majlis, or parliament, who had just got back to his flat, sweaty and exhilarated, from welcoming the Ayatollah in the tumultuous streets of Tehran. “Anything is better than the shah,” he answered, “and Khomeini will be easy to get round. He’s just a bigoted old ignoramus, after all.”
Having met and interviewed Khomeini outside Paris at Neauphle-le-Château a couple of weeks earlier, I wasn’t convinced, and I was right. My friend died in Evin prison a year or so later, in a way I prefer not to think about; Khomeini stayed in power until his death 10 years later, and handed on the system which has lasted, largely unchanged and certainly unmoderated, until today. As Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are discovering, merely chopping off the regime’s head is absolutely pointless. Its strength goes far deeper than that.
The Iranian Revolution did not start a religious revolution than the Russian Revolution started as a Leninist project. But Khomeini and Lenin were the ones steadfast in their pursuit of power.
Lady C by Guy Cuthbertson review – how Lady Chatterley’s Lover rocked Britain may be the best recommendation for a novel I thought was dull.
I saw this when I was 14 and had no idea what it was until Springsteen released The River: Cadillac Ranch.
sch 5/12
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