Category: history

Medicare for all, or the Bell System solution?

The other day an older woman in my social circle mentioned that she had to finance unpaid charges from her dual cataract surgery. “Four thousand dollars per eye,” she said. “Eight thousand in total.”

This woman is not indigent. She’s a retired public school teacher on Medicare.  She also has supplemental Medicare insurance through Anthem.

This suggests that neither Medicare nor Anthem is all that great.

What options are available for those who are too young for Medicare? The Affordable Care Act (ACA)—aka Obamacare—insurance plans provide high-priced, privately available health insurance plans that come with high deductibles. And there’s another catch—many physicians do not treat patients on ACA plans.

The Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010 in an effort to make health insurance more accessible to individual purchasers. But the ACA preserved the oligopolistic structure of the preexisting healthcare insurance market. This factor (combined with the inefficiencies of government planning) made ACA expensive and inefficient, despite the underlying intentions.

The typical ACA plan costs $650 per month, with a deductible in the $5,000 to $10,000 range, and a very limited selection of network physicians. This is not good health insurance.

“Medicare for all” has therefore entered the public debate space again this election cycle. DSA-backed Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed are advocating for single-payer public insurance, and this is taken as evidence of the Democratic Party’s sudden lurch to the left.

But the first Democrat to make such a proposal was Harry S. Truman. In 1945, just seven months after he took office, Truman made a written proposal for the creation of a national healthcare program. Universal healthcare was also an animating cause for the Democratic Party in 1992—the election that brought Bill Clinton to power. Neither Harry Truman nor Bill Clinton are widely regarded as wild-eyed left-wing radicals today.

America’s healthcare system is expensive, inefficient, and often unavailable—in practical terms—for anyone who is not insured under a top-tier corporate plan.

The linkage of health insurance to specific corporate employment is a longstanding flaw that is no longer appropriate in the age of the gig economy, entrepreneurship, or—for that matter—the family farm. Recent headlines indicate that large banks and other corporate employers are gearing up for massive downsizing because of anticipated AI-related efficiencies. The demand for health insurance not linked to a corporate plan is likely to increase in the coming years. Continue reading “Medicare for all, or the Bell System solution?”

Moral panic over Pattaya, and an innovative madam of World War II Honolulu

Betty Jean O’Hara (1913-1973) was a famed lady of the night and madam in Honolulu, Hawaii’s Hotel Street red-light district during World War II. O’Hara came up with a novel solution to cope with the demand of randy US sailors during the conflict.

O’Hara set up a Hotel Street brothel that combined sexual services with the assembly-line efficiency of a Ford plant. Each of O’Hara’s employees rotated between a series of three rooms. In one room a man would be undressing, in another a fellow would be engaging in an act of carnal knowledge. In a third room, a satiated sailor would be getting dressed. The Hotel Street red-light district of Honolulu lasted throughout most of World War II.

I never served in the military, but I have met many men who have. In the 1980s I met a man a few years older than me who was stationed in South Korea with the US Army in the late 1970s. He told me stories of “Miss Oh”, a local courtesan in Daegu, South Korea. Based on the gleam in his eye when he reminisced, Miss Oh must have been a proverbial firecracker.

One of my high school acquaintances was in the US Marine Corps during the 1980s. (I’ll call him Mitch.) Mitch also served in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

Many years later, I ran into Mitch at a reunion and he told me some war stories.

While relating his experiences abroad, Mitch also mentioned a handful of experiences with professional women—mostly in the Philippines, where large numbers of US service personnel were stationed through about 1992.

I was somewhat surprised. Mitch had been the archetypical ladies’ man in high school: a handsome, charming, multi-sport athlete. Not the kind of guy one associates with sex workers.

Perhaps sensing my surprise at his revelation, Mitch explained: “You’re a young guy in a foreign country, working in a mostly male organization (the Marine Corps). There aren’t many opportunities for conventional dating and relationships.”

Things are different, though, in this enlightened 21st century. The USS Abraham Lincoln has just docked in Thailand. The aircraft carrier and its crew participated in US military operations against Iran, and stayed at sea for more than 260 days—almost nine months.

And what are people worried about? Some of the male members of the crew may visit prostitutes in Pattaya, Thailand, a city famed for its red-light district. Continue reading “Moral panic over Pattaya, and an innovative madam of World War II Honolulu”

“The Door-to-Door Man”: a short story set in the age of “stranger danger”

It’s an ordinary spring afternoon in suburban Cincinnati, 1980.

Eighteen-year-old Michelle Blevins is home with her younger brother when a stranger rings the doorbell.

The stranger is wearing a blazer, tie, and aviator sunglasses. He says he represents a local law firm. He says Michelle’s parents are in trouble.

And he really wants to come inside.

That’s the setup for “The Door-to-Door Man,” my latest original short story for YouTube.

Those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s will remember that this was the era of “stranger danger.”

In some ways, the world was considerably less connected than it is today. There were no cell phones, doorbell cameras, GPS trackers, or Internet searches. If a stranger appeared at your front door, you couldn’t pull out your phone and immediately find out who he was.

At the same time, people were becoming increasingly aware that the world wasn’t necessarily as safe as they had once imagined.

Serial killers, violent crime, and mysterious disappearances regularly made the news. Parents warned their children about strangers. And yet it was still perfectly normal for unfamiliar people—salesmen, repairmen, deliverymen, religious solicitors, and others—to simply walk up to your house and ring the doorbell.

That combination provides the backdrop for “The Door-to-Door Man.”

I’ve been experimenting with writing very short fiction specifically for YouTube: complete stories that can be read or listened to in a single sitting, accompanied by atmospheric visuals.

“The Door-to-Door Man” is one of these stories. It’s a tale of suspense rather than supernatural horror. There are no ghosts, monsters, or paranormal forces here. Just an ordinary young woman, an ordinary suburban house—and a stranger at the door who may not be what he claims to be.

You can watch and listen to the complete story in the video accompanying this post.

If you enjoy “The Door-to-Door Man”…

You might also want to check out my DEADLY BYWAYS series.

Deadly Byways consists of six novels set in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Like “The Door-to-Door Man,” these stories explore the darker side of an era that many of us remember with nostalgia—but which had plenty of dangers and shadows of its own.

The books are available on Amazon and can also be read through Kindle Unlimited.

If you enjoy suspense stories about ordinary people confronting extraordinary dangers—especially stories set against the backdrop of America several decades ago—DEADLY BYWAYS may be for you.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy “The Door-to-Door Man.”

And remember: be careful who you open your front door to.

-ET

Shariah law fails Economics 101

One of the nice things about the pre-internet world was that the foolishness of teenagers and young adults was usually restricted to small audiences. But now we have Gen Z social media influencers. Canyon Mimbs is a 22-year-old convert to Islam who wants to tell the world what he knows–or thinks he knows.

Theology is not my bailiwick. Like Elizabeth I, I do not seek to make windows into men’s souls. But economics is another matter.

Young Mr. Mimbs advocates for shariah law in the USA. Well, why not? Half of Gen Z is joining the DSA, if you believe the internet. There are any number of reasons why shariah law would be incompatible with our American system, but in this post, I’ll focus on one: shariah’s prohibition on interest. Continue reading “Shariah law fails Economics 101”

Vietnam Vets and Generation X

Today Vietnam vets are older men in their seventies and eighties. But when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, Vietnam vets were young middle-aged men in their thirties and forties.

When I was very young, Vietnam vets were still in their twenties. I was born in 1968, so I have no direct memories of the Vietnam War. I do, however, remember its immediate aftermath. It was a common topic of conversation in the mid-1970s. In those days, the war—as well as the political and social turmoil of the 1960s—were very much in recent memory.

Movies about the American War and Vietnam began to appear in the 1970s. These include Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter. Although Taxi Driver is not technically a movie about the Vietnam War, its central character, Travis Bickle, is a disturbed Vietnam War veteran.

And this was the common “meme,” to use an internet-age word: the disturbed Vietnam War veteran. In film and literature, Vietnam vets were often portrayed as brooding, volatile individuals.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that the American Vietnam War experience began to be portrayed with a bit more nuance. The release of the Vietnam War film Platoon, a commercial and critical success, portrayed the Vietnam War as a complex situation in which American soldiers often had to choose the least bad option. As the 1980s concluded, portrayals of Vietnam vets became far less simplistic, more diverse, and more respectful.

I would never attempt to write a novel about the Vietnam experience itself. But I did include a Vietnam vet in my Gen X coming-of-age novel, No Sure Thing. The novel is primarily the story of Paul Nelson, a 19-year-old University of Cincinnati student. But Paul’s mentor, Ron McNab, is a 42-year-old Vietnam vet. (No Sure Thing is set in 1988.)

I would describe the character of Ron McNab as half-fictional. Throughout my formative years, I met many Vietnam vets who shared their experiences with me. Several of them became an inspiration for Ron.

-ET

**View NO SURE THING on Amazon**

Germany banning films… again

We all know the history surrounding Nazi Germany and its authoritarian controls on popular culture. The Third Reich aggressively banned art that the Nazi Party deemed substandard, degenerate, or subversive.

But that was 90 years ago, right? Today Germany is a modern, democratic nation that isn’t afraid of free expression. Right?

Not exactly. The old authoritarian impulses still hold sway in Berlin. Last month German movie regulators refused to assign a rating to director Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante. Since it is illegal to distribute films in Germany that have not been rated, this effectively banned Citizen Vigilante from the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Citizen Vigilante stars Armie Hammer as Michael Sanders, a vigilante who hunts down rapists and violent criminals, many of whom are migrants from Islamic countries.

The movie is an unsubtle statement on government policies that have tolerated—and perhaps even encouraged—mass migration from the Middle East to destinations in the European Union and (to a lesser extent) North America. (Uwe Boll is a German filmmaker.)

By all accounts, Citizen Vigilante is not a pleasant film, and perhaps you could argue that it is not even a particularly good one. But if present headlines are any indication, this is a debate that is not going away anytime soon. The backlash against mass migration is not limited to the Trump-voting sectors of America. The same backlash has been building in Europe for quite some time now. The immigration issue is the primary reason for the recent successes of Germany’s right-leaning Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

In the internet age, you simply cannot stamp out ideas. After the movie was suppressed in Germany, Elon Musk made it available for 48 hours, free of charge, on his X platform.

I didn’t hear about the movie because of Elon Musk, however. I learned of Citizen Vigilante when I read a finger-wagging article decrying the film’s very existence. It probably would have escaped my notice otherwise. That’s the irony of cancel culture: the very act of denouncing something has the unintended consequence of amplifying it.

I haven’t seen Citizen Vigilante, though I’ve seen clips of some of its most controversial scenes. By all indications, the movie is boilerplate vigilante spectacle. That’s an old genre in entertainment. It goes all the way back to the Race Williams detective stories published in Black Mask in the 1920s, when large numbers of Americans were anxious about rising crime rates. In the 1970s, it was manifest in the Death Wish vigilante films starring the already fifty-something Charles Bronson.

The notion of citizens taking the law into their own hands is an uncomfortable topic for a film. But when such movies become popular, it is usually because of some genuine grassroots frustration with the status quo. Perhaps this is the issue that the German government should really be paying attention to, rather than trying to ban what is, by all accounts, a rather mediocre movie.

Although the Third Reich ended more than eighty years ago, German authorities are still uncomfortable with the concept of unregulated speech. They are also, apparently, unfamiliar with the concept of reverse psychology.

Never before have so many movies, videos, and whatnot competed for our attention. The best way to convince people to seek out an otherwise obscure movie is for a government to declare its director a pariah and his movie verboten. Citizen Vigilante received over 10.5 million views, from all over the world, during its 48-hour free run on X.

-ET

Daniel Ortega: history repeats itself

Which Latin American strongman was most on the mind of the American president in 1986? Daniel Ortega, the dictator of Nicaragua.

Ortega, a Marxist protégé of the USSR, ruled Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. The Reagan administration provided aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, often through clandestine means. This led to the infamous Iran-Contra scandal of Reagan’s second term in office.

Time Magazine, March 1986

There was talk in some quarters about direct U.S. intervention in the Latin American nation in the 1980s, though I don’t think this was ever seriously on the table.

Ortega was eventually ousted from within and found himself out of power for seventeen years, from 1990 to 2007. Then he came back into power. Ortega’s second dictatorship has lasted for almost 20 years now.

The 80-year-old Ortega has just declared that Nicaragua will no longer hold elections at all. We’re back to the 1980s.

No, I’m not about to suggest that the US should attempt to force a regime change in Nicaragua. That was a bad idea in 1986, and it’s a bad idea now. From the U.S. perspective, the situation in Nicaragua is a nuisance, not an existential threat.

But we may consider the irony. So much has changed since the mid-1980s. (To consider the matter from a personal perspective, I turned 18 in 1986, the year I graduated from high school. I will soon turn 58.)

There are, however, some constants in this ever-changing world. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

-ET

The world before CNN: less information and fuller lives

Ted Turner passed on May 6 after a long, busy life. While his enterprises were numerous, he is best remembered for the Cable News Network, aka CNN, which launched on June 1, 1980.

Most of us did not get CNN right away. Even middle-class households were slow to adopt cable. Americans really did believe that we could exist with access to only four or five television stations in those days.

My parents purchased a cable subscription with CNN included in 1982. For many years, CNN included a partner channel called CNN Headline News. The idea was simple: all the major headlines in thirty minutes.

CNN has become controversial in recent years, depending on one’s political sentiments. President Trump has repeatedly referred to the network as “fake news.” Early on, CNN was mostly apolitical and mostly dedicated to reporting the news in an objective manner. There were no significant controversies like that back then.

On the contrary, pretty much everyone believed that there was something amazing about CNN. Prior to that, if you wanted to watch the news, you had to tune in right around dinnertime. The local news ran from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m., and the national news ran on each major network afterward.

Either that or (gasp!) read the newspaper. Most Americans had longer attention spans in those days, and actually didn’t mind reading the newspaper, but that’s another topic for another day.

I watched CNN sporadically during the 1980s, but I was a high school kid for most of that period. My CNN obsession began in 1989, with the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing. About a year after that came the first Gulf War. For both events, I was tuned in to CNN multiple times throughout the day.

Bad things happened before CNN became common in American homes. There were wars, government scandals, and troubling international events like the Tehran hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981.

Although I was a kid then, I don’t believe that most American adults ignored national and global problems. There was, however, a commonly held belief that attention was best directed closer to home. Plenty of Americans were dismayed at Nixon’s corruption, or Carter’s bumbling, but there was generally less outrage about the news.

Maybe this was because there were fewer news broadcasts to consume. (And this was long, long before the internet or social media). This made faraway events, including events taking place in another American city, genuinely remote.

It’s also worth noting that in 1980, almost all American adults of childbearing age were married. Most had children. Their personal lives were full and demanding.

This is another way in which 2026 is far removed from 1980. Nowadays, only about a third of young American adults are married, and even fewer have children.

Perhaps that makes it easier to sell them on the notion that the news is more important than their daily lives, that events in Washington DC are more urgent and pressing than events taking place in their living rooms.

Sadly, for all too many Americans in 2026, that is genuinely the case.

In 1980, it usually wasn’t.

-ET

Jennifer Big Eyes: generational name patterns

I was born in 1968. I did not go to school with a single boy named Ryan.

Thirty-odd years later, I was in the workforce. I met a lot of younger men (born in the mid- to late-1970s) named Ryan.

This was odd. Where had all these Ryans come from? And where had they been before, during my childhood, teens, and twenties?

The mid-1970s surge of boys named Ryan is an example of how generational naming patterns can turn on a dime. From the 1950s through the end of the 1960s, the following male given names were much more popular for newborns in the United States:

  • Mike/Michael
  • David
  • John
  • Mark
  • Scott
  • Steve/Steven
  • Kevin
  • Jeff/Jeffrey

The sudden (and relatively short-lived) increase in American babies named Ryan can be partly attributed to two factors: the popularity of the actor Ryan O’Neal (1941-2023), and the debut of the soap opera Ryan’s Hope in 1975. So if you’re an Xennial man named Ryan, it’s likely that you owe your name to a soap opera. The popularity of the name Ryan tapered off in the mid-1980s, right around the time that the soap opera’s ratings started to decline.

My name, Edward, was uncommon among boys my age. I was named after my father. Over the years, I have heard various explanations for the reason my father was given this name. None of them are entirely satisfactory. Edward is certainly not a family name for our clan, in any meaningful sense.

When I was a kid, I would sometimes meet adults who delighted in telling me about Mister Ed, the 1960s sitcom that featured a talking horse of the same name. They would then imply that I might have been named after the sitcom’s eponymous equine.

Despite my youth, I was quick to disabuse them of such notions. (Oh, the traumas that children had to endure at the hands of adults, before the advent of the “self-esteem” craze.)

My mother was born in 1946. She was named Linda—like more than a million other women born in that era. Linda was a much overused name during the Baby Boomer birth years. Linda was, in fact, the second most popular name for newborn girls during the 1940s, according to the Social Security Administration’s online database.

Throughout my life, I have met many Boomer women named Linda. I have never, so far as I can remember, met a woman my age or younger named Linda; but I don’t doubt that they exist.

When I try to think of any Linda who doesn’t have Baby Boomer associations, the only one who comes to mind is Linda Barrett, the fictional sexpot of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).

But once again, there are Baby Boomer connections. Even though Fast Times at Ridgemont High is regarded as an early Gen X movie, the movie’s director, Amy Heckerling, born in 1954, is solidly in boomer territory. (Heckerling is closer in age to my parents than to me.) I think it’s safe to say that the name “Linda” belongs entirely to the Baby Boom generation.

The most popular girls’ name in the 1940s was Mary. Mary was my maternal grandmother’s name. She was born in 1922. I have never met a woman my age or younger named Mary, either. I have met some Mary Jo’s who were born in the 1960s and 1970s, but never a plain old Mary. Once again, I am sure that they exist; but they are comparatively rare.

Kayla is a girl’s name that came out of nowhere in the 1990s. One never encountered the name when I was a kid. I began meeting Kaylas around 2010, just as the first girls given that name were reaching early adulthood. I have nothing against the name Kayla, but what’s wrong with its more traditional analog, Katie?

Among Gen X girls, Jennifer is the most popular name, hands down. Jennifer was already becoming popular when I was born, in the late 1960s. But Jennifer really surged in popularity in the early 1970s. It is the most common name for American girls born in that decade.

This is why there are so many 50-something women nowadays named Jennifer. Jennifer Aniston (born in 1969) is just one drop in that vast ocean of Jennifers.

I went to school with more Jennifers than I can count. Later in life, I met many more who were just a few years younger than me (born in the first half of the 1970s).

I seem to have been surrounded by Jennifers from the very beginning. My mother informed me that when I was a newborn, the couple living in the apartment unit next to my parents had a two-year-old girl named—lo and behold—Jennifer.

The girl had especially wide, blue eyes. She was also fond of staring at adults, according to my mother’s telling. My mother therefore nicknamed her Jennifer Big Eyes. Over the years, Jennifer Big Eyes has come up in conversation from time to time.

Jennifer Big Eyes would now be, I would guess, in her early 60s. I don’t believe my mother ever knew her full name. I have no idea where she would be nowadays, or if she is even still alive. After that many years, anything is possible. But I do hope that Jennifer Big Eyes is still out there somewhere, and that she is doing well. One more Gen X Jennifer among so many.

-ET

Chernobyl + 40 years

In the spring of 1986, many Americans were following events in the Soviet Union. The new man in the Kremlin was Mikhail Gorbachev, a young (by Soviet standards) leader who was eager to reform the Soviet system. Gorbachev also sought better relations with the West.

I was a senior in high school in 1986. I was interested in the Soviet Union, too. I was old enough to remember the final Cold War tensions of the late 1970s and early 1980s: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the downing of KAL 007. But now, a new world seemed to be in the making.

Then, on April 26, there was a major nuclear accident at Chernobyl, in an area of the Soviet Union then commonly known as “the Ukraine”.

The Kremlin tried to cover it up (of course). The Kremlin had covered up similar disasters in the past (including one at a biological weapons facility in a remote part of the USSR). But this was too big to conceal.

Chernobyl would be in the news for months—years—afterward. The problem still hasn’t gone away completely.

In retrospect, the Chernobyl disaster (which sprung from Soviet ineptitude) was the first sign that Western optimism about the USSR in the mid-1980s was misplaced.

Forty years have passed since then. The former Soviet lands are still the source of mostly bad news. Case-in-point: the war between Russia and Ukraine, now in its fifth year.

-ET

New Cover for REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS!

Revolutionary Ghosts is my 2019 novel based on a premise that mixes supernatural horror and history:

Suppose that the Headless Horseman of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” were to return to terrorize modern-day America.

But not 21st-century, present-day America. (The current century has enough real horrors without make-believe, thank you very much.)

Most of Revolutionary Ghosts is set in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial. This is historical horror with a cool ‘70s vibe.

The original 2019 cover was, however, badly in need of a refresh. This is the new cover:

You can find Revolutionary Ghosts on Amazon. The book is coming out of Kindle Unlimited on April 1. Shortly after that, you’ll be able to get it on Apple Books, Kobo, Google, and B&N. Library distribution will also be rolled out. So you can read it that way if your local library has an arrangement with OverDrive.

-ET

Pearl Harbor + 84 years

This happened 27 years before I was born. But I grew up hearing about it from my grandparents, who were members of the World War II generation.

In 2025, the living ranks of those who remember this as news are growing thin. But for me (largely because of my grandparents), December 7 will always have a special significance.

And this Pearl Harbor Day, like the first one, falls on a Sunday.

-ET

The year is 1938…

The year is 1938. Betty Lehmann is an undercover German spy. Can anyone stop her? Find out in THE CAIRO DECEPTION, a 5-book, World War II historical fiction series.

**Read it for FREE in Kindle Unlimited**

 

 

Veterans Day, and my grandfather’s World War II stories

Tuesday was Veteran’s Day here in the USA. Many GenXers, myself included, had grandparents of the World War II generation.

My maternal grandfather was born in 1921 and enlisted in the US Navy in December 1941, shortly after Pearl Harbor. In the video below, I relate some of the stories he used to tell me.

Happy Veterans Day to all who served!

-ET