Political leaders in cities across America, that espouse lackluster and ineffective law and order initiatives, will likely decrease and divert funding for law enforcement and put those funds into more social programs. U.S. government social programs too often have too many unintended consequences, so no matter if taxpayer funds are decreased and diverted or not decreased or diverted, and depending on the neighborhood where you live, just in case, it may be a wise move to ‘mount up’ and prepare to defend yourself, your loved ones and your property.
Why? You have never been able to count on corporate conglomerates, with underlying profit motives, to protect the public at large. These days corporations always pander and submit to the whims of the prevailing attitudes swirling around in the public rather than risk losing profits for stock shareholders, as well as the high salaries with ‘bonuses’ for corporate management. Furthermore, for the most part, news media outlets rarely ever spend the time and money any more that is necessary to do investigative and/or undercover reporting; and all news media outlets have chosen their ‘political sides’ to fight for so consumers rarely ever get both sides of a news story. And you cannot count on social media outlets like Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, and others like them, to allow all opinions to be expressed without some sort of censorship of thoughts and ideas. Remember, data making up any available facts constantly changes, and facts are nothing more than a consensus of the prevailing authoritative opinions of the ruling parties currently ‘in charge’ at a certain point in time.
So who can we count on? Prepare to defend yourselves because there may be spikes in crime at times when the police and law enforcement authorities are under increased intense scrutiny. Today, police morale is poor in too many American cities and states. There is a growing feeling among police officers that ‘no police officers want to risk being on that next video that goes viral’. Consequently, police officers may be less aggressive, and even somewhat passive, in pursuing criminals so, in too many cases, it may no longer be worth it for police officers to risk their lives and livelihoods to save you or your loved ones.
Especially in America’s larger cities, police today will likely make fewer arrests and make fewer ‘street stops’ and law abiding people may see an increase in everything from petty crime to violent crime. Remember, crime statistics have not always been fairly reported by city governments because no city government wants to portray their city as crime-ridden. Furthermore, out-of-control city crime statistics would inhibit profits from tourism.
Three times as many police officers commit suicide compared to the number killed while on duty. Stress may turn cops into ‘outlaws’ especially when they get frustrated with the justice system once they feel like they are fighting a losing battle against career criminals.
Police accused rarely break the ‘blue code of silence’ to expose police wrongdoings. It is very difficult to get cops to testify against other cops, similar to getting doctors to testify against other doctors concerning careless medical procedures, incompetent diagnoses and medical malpractice.
About 10% of all doctors may be incompetent, yet only about 10% of the incompetent, ‘bad’ ones are ever even charged with medical malpractice. The American Medical Association (AMA), the one and only medical watchdog group for the public, claims it is getting tougher on physician incompetency but critics are quick to point out that the AMA is not getting tougher on its member physicians to date as of 2020.
The reality may be that too often doctor incompetence may not be getting exposed by the AMA but instead gets exposed by the media and the public. Unlike in the past, incompetent physicians, today, are losing their ‘cover’, so to speak, and unable in many cases to hide their incompetent practices and procedures from scrutiny and public view.
And do not get fooled by ‘titles’ in the medical business. For example, a ‘resident physician’, is not really a fully qualified doctor but instead is a student doctor ‘in training’ and ‘practicing’ on you. Teaching university hospitals make the most use of resident physicians or student doctors. Also, critics charge, the ‘residents’ may be overworked and lack complete and total supervision according to recognized health and safety standards.
Also consider not having major surgery done in the summertime when, generally, the better surgeons may be on vacation, or later in the week, Friday through Sunday, when the ‘better’ doctors may not even be on duty due to long weekends or other commitments. Moreover, beware of going to emergency rooms late at night because you may end up getting treated by what is jokingly known as ‘the intern with the dull spoon’.
Get admitted to a ‘teaching hospital’ and you may get a doctor who has never even written a prescription and the results could possibly be deadly. Most patients may not know they are being cared for by student doctors who are just weeks out of medical school when they get admitted to or seek treatment at a teaching hospital.
Student doctors are said to be plugged into a teaching hospital environment to ‘sink or swim’ as the old saying goes. The ‘egos’ of ‘junior’ doctors may lead them to try and hide what they lack in medical knowledge and experience with potentially deadly results. Responding anonymously in one study, too many resident physicians said that 1/3 of their medical mistakes lead to the death of their patients, and 25% of the residents said they even tried to cover up their own mistakes.
The question is, what states even have a law that is supposed to keep student doctors from being overworked and under-supervised? Remember, all student doctors are still allowed to wear the emblem ‘physician’ on their jacket so you never really know what expertise is behind the emblem when you are admitted to a teaching hospital.
The only way for consumers to find out if doctors or surgeons have any malpractice lawsuits held against them is to comb through U.S. court records of every county of every state in the U.S. where each and every doctor in question has practiced medicine because the medical community, and the AMA, will not allow the public to have access to the U.S. government run National Practitioner Bank, once located in Fairfax, Virginia, which is where all doctors’ lawsuits had been listed.
This Bank’s actual physical location, established and maintained by taxpayer dollars, reportedly is not listed anywhere so the public may not even know it exists. Even the building it is located in is not listed anywhere and has no sign or shingle hanging out in front of it, conceivably, so disgruntled patients and inquisitive consumer advocates and/or the news media cannot converge on the offices and demand to see doctors’ medical practitioner records.
This bank, a U.S. government operation, will not even allow citizens to find out information that may help them make informed medical decisions which could possibly help save their lives and/or the lives of their loved ones. Today, too many doctors may still be practicing medicine that have had numerous malpractice lawsuits filed against them, and guess what? When a state determines that a particular doctor IS incompetent and should lose his license, all the ‘problem doctor’, generally, has to do is move to another state and start all over again…and local consumers there will never even know.
The fact that the U.S. government will not allow consumers access to information about physician misconduct simply does not pass the ‘smell test’ and it is the American Medical Association (AMA) that seemingly is leading the fight to keep this vital information from consumers.
Remember, the AMA has a very powerful lobbying group in Washington, D.C., and of course, claims that the information being held at ‘the Bank’ in Fairfax, Virginia, may not be relevant to consumers. However, critics charge consumers should be able to decide for themselves. Instead, only medical doctors on ‘the Board’ of the Bank get to decide what information is to be released to the public. Remember, state medical licensing boards and committees seem notoriously slow to react and punish ‘problem doctors’.
It may take many years for any state medical licensing board to even attempt to bring a ‘problem doctor’ to justice and, in the meantime, that doctor can continue practicing medicine, possibly endangering the lives of many more patients in the process.
Reportedly, the AMA has tried to get the National Practitioner Bank closed so the public may never be able to get at medical malpractice information. Critics charge that 3 settled lawsuits against a doctor in 5 years should constitute a warning that a particular doctor may have problems IF you can ever even find out this information. Similarly police unions and teachers unions protect individual police officers and teachers from public scrutiny and possible termination of the ‘bad seeds’ within their organizations.
Other culprits to defend yourself from are public opinion surveys and/or polls which regularly show that the public may not trust doctors, law enforcement, politicians, advertisers and many other professions and career categories. Keep in mind that there are only two truly reliable and valid scientific instruments for measuring empirical data resulting in potential credible conclusions at the moment in time the research is conducted. And those two are scientific experiments and scientific research studies. However, public opinion surveys and opinion polls are the most unreliable and invalid of all existing scientific instruments available to measure empirical scientific data.
Why are polls and surveys so untrustworthy? ‘Loaded and leading’ questions put to consumers, voters and others, render potentially ‘slanted’ and desirable results sought by those conducting or paying for the poll or survey. The ‘loaded, slanted’ survey and poll results are then channeled to the survey and poll sponsors’ ‘comrades’ in the media, or elsewhere, to be used for other self-serving interests.
Interestingly, when survey or poll results are spewed out the mouths of the ‘talking heads’ in the media, and elsewhere, looking to persuade you and ‘push’ you in one direction or the other, rarely does anyone ever make public the actual questions being asked, or the specific details concerning the demographic makeup of those responding to the survey or poll, or specific details how the data was collected then ‘crunched’ to get the survey or poll results. Regardless, like any statistical research of any kind, anywhere, at any time, survey and poll results taken today may be obsolete tomorrow due to the public’s ever-evolving mind-set that may tend to change day to day depending on who is asking the questions and how the questions are asked. Furthermore, what people SAY they believe in response to some question may not always be what they ACTUALLY believe.
Making matters worse, deceitful, political pollsters conduct biased, ‘push’ polls and surveys of voter attitudes then use the ‘phony’ poll results to feed false information to the news media about opposition candidates and/or the opposition’s political campaign proposals. They ‘play’ on the prejudices, weaknesses and vulnerabilities of American voters as if voters are unknowing fools to be herded like ‘lambs to slaughter’.
Whoever sponsors a ‘push’ poll purposely twists the poll’s questioning procedures, and its subsequent results, to try and push voters away from the opposition and push voters toward candidates or ideas favored by those paying for or sponsoring the poll. Of course, too often the poll’s sponsor may be some ‘do-gooder think tank’ or official sounding organization, a name that may be totally misleading or familiar, similar to so-called conservation groups that go out and hunt the exotic, wild animals they say they intend to protect.
‘Phony’, deceiving push polling tactics, and subsequent results, can also be used to fill voters’ heads full of negative information on opposing candidates under the guise of conducting a legitimate non-political research poll or public service.
The sources used in the information here was publicized many years ago showing not much has changed since then and, in too many ways has become even worse. Consequently, the public may need to prepare to defend themselves.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCES: HEARD ON MORNING EDITION / DAVID SCHAPER 3/11/2016 and ‘COPS IN STRESS’ ON DISCOVERY TV NETWORK SHOW “JUSTICE FILES” 10/27/96 and ABC-TV SHOW 20/20 3/3/98 and ‘PROBLEM DOCTORS’ ON NBC-TV DATELINE SHOW 1/7/97 and CNN TV NEWS and HEADLINE TV NEWS 4/5/95