My Journey to Linux and Peace

 This story is part of my mental health journey to embrace things that give me more peace, pleasure and less agitation.

As I continue my painful recovery from surgery and float through the cybersphere, I came across a post on one of my subreddits — a Linux Mint forum. The post celebrated the first release of this operating system on August 27, 2006.

Why should this matter to me? Or to anyone else?

Well, late in 2023, I decided that Microsoft had become too intrusive to both my pocket book and my data. The tech giant converted its office suite into a subscription-based product while disabling and locking away access to former versions of Office, which had been fully paid for making practically industry-standard Word, Outlook, Excel and other programs useless. The threat that the firm’s monopoly-coveting greed would extend to renting the main operating system seemed real to me, specifically because its PR flacks issued denials of the possibility. Then, “security” updates to the Windows 10 system imposed defaults to such things as OneDrive, where all your work was loaded into the Microsoft cloud app or “copilot,” a supposed artificial intelligence app. It was clear that my “personal” computer was really just becoming Microsoft’s work station placed in my home.

Then with no rational justification, Microsoft’s new hardware requirements for its Windows 11 operating system would vomit, according to some estimates, about 240 million (yes, million) older devices in landfills. I lack any civil words for condemning Microsoft’s rape of the environment.

I knew, from my introduction to personal computing in 1976, other operating systems were available; and I knew from playing in cyberspace in 2016 that operating systems based on Unix and Linux were gaining ground and becoming more user friendly. So, I went on a research spree and, in November 2023, checked into various Linux operating systems (called distros in Linux-speak). The learning curve was steep, complicated by the fact that some of my essential finance and photography programs were not available for Linux systems; or, that the Linux variants were simply not robust enough.

After an agonizing trek through research and testing in December and part of January 2024, I decided that I wanted a “dual boot” system. That is, I wanted the ability to start and/or boot my powerful desktop computer into either Windows 10 or Linux Mint Cinnamon. The latter Linux system’s desktop environment looked much like Windows although it was completely different. That decision made, I took apart my computer and following very helpful YouTube videos, installed two solid state drives, or SSDs, and then loaded Windows 10 on one and Linux Mint Cinnamon on the other. I reattached all the drives and booted up. By the end of last January, I had everything installed with both operating systems available at my command. And, the few Windows-only programs run on that SSD while the majority of my “daily driver” applications are on my Linux drive.

Remember I said environmental rapist Microsoft is forcing those who want/need to run Windows 11 to give up perfectly good devices, flooding landfills with the poisons of Silicon Valley? Well, a major answer to dodging the cost of new equipment is that the variety of Linux distros let you choose one that will work on older machines because even the most robust of Linux flavors are less bloated than Microsoft’s operating systems. My Linux Mint Cinnamon is lightening fast on a 2011 ASUS laptop that slogged along on Windows 10.

There is another benefit to using Linux and Linux-based applications. They are known as “open source,” which means they are free; they are supported by large communities of developers who will take but not require contributions. So my word processing, video editing and playback apps, other office-programs, browsers and VPN are all free and run on Linux. I am writing this on LibreWriter, which is part of my LibreOffice suite. It’s not as robust as Word in some ways, but it’s easy to use and, as I noted, free. Even better, none of the Linux applications default to data sharing or have embedded spyware. Further, as many in the Linux community will point out, these distros are remarkably secure and almost totally immune to malware attacks.

Moving from the major computing environments to Linux can be challenging. In my moments of great frustration, and there were many, I reminded myself I was also learning things and the exercise was good for my Hercule Poirot-type “little gray cells.” Now I start my days in Mint condition, visiting Microsoft once a day to handle finances. It gives me peace to know I am less vulnerable to BigTech and am part of a community with similar values to mine. If you, dear reader, wish to detach from BigTech and greedy capitalism, take a look at Linux. Even if you don’t convert, you will have learned there are more options for you and your computer to enjoy.

Abbott and the stormtroopers

 

On August 8, 2024, Greg Abbott, the Nazi who purports to be the governor of Texas, issued Executive Order GA-46.

The order, as the Texas Tribune notes, “ … requires public hospitals in Texas to collect information on the immigration status of patients so that the hospitals can then track costs incurred for the care of undocumented migrants.”

But, that’s only part of it. The order requires that hospitals enrolled in Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and any provider the Health and Human Services Commission defines as a hospital to comply. So, clearly DeTar and Citizens are being abused by these stormtroopers; but so are the hospitals in Cuero, Hallettsville and other neighboring towns. Further the HHSC can extend the order to encompass any other provider it wants to. At what point would this stop?

Let’s leave aside the notion that this Gestapo-like overreach clearly violates the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and any other laws about patient confidentiality. If you read the order, it’s a rant to feed more red meat to the radical Texas Reich base. It’s also going to clearly drive sick people away from health care — and that will include many legal as well as undocumented people of color. This racism  would make Hitler and Joseph Goebbels proud. And, no, that is not too extreme a label for Abbott, Patrick, Paxton and the rest of the Republican ilk.

One question is whether the hospitals and other related industry associations will fight this in court. And, will the media cover this monstrosity as the media should or will the media be complicit enablers of these ogres.

Lord knows, were I still an active reporter, I’d be on this like a duck on a June bug. But I am not. I lack the resources to file the requisite record requests and engage the in fight over facts that would ensue. Nor do my blog or Facebook pages have the reach and traction this exposé desperately needs. I have, for the record, reached out to the new editor at The Victoria Advocate. I will, along with the posting this, reach out to others in my media network.

Let’s see what happens.

A long overdue confession

I’ve been giving a lot of thought about my experiences in grad school and about the 25 years working in the health care industry. And I want to say something I’ve needed to for a very long time. You see, I didn’t go to grad school for hospital administration because I loved the idea of being in health care. My parents pushed me to because they didn’t think I could make a living following my long-held dream of being a writer. Why that’s so is a story for another time.

These facts may be 57 years old. But, I was there, bore witness and remember them clearly.

In 1967, I enrolled in the master’s program in Hospital and Health Administration at the University of Iowa. It was a structured program; the first two 15-hour semesters led to a summer “internship,” followed by another two-semester-15-hour stint. The final semester was focused on the masters thesis. It was lock-step. The program sought to turn out administrative practitioners and doctoral graduates who would enter the field as either researchers and/or academicians.

The Iowa program was headed by an academician credited as one of the founders of the field of health care administration, the late Gerhard Hartman. Hartman was a Prussian to the core. And a tyrant. A dishonest tyrant. And, a petty tyrant at that. I will never forget Hartman referring to the doctoral student who was my thesis “supervisor” as a “martinet” in front of my entire class. So, what, in addition to his mean spirit, what else did students learn under Hartman’s tutelage?

Modeling behavior is an effective way to teach, to instill values and mold character. What did Hartman model? That it was acceptable to engage in private consulting services using the university’s resources for copying, typing and charging other expenses to the university funds. That it was acceptable to pass off the students’ research and writing as his own in a consulting report. And, that it was acceptable to exploit people; he required the students’ parts of the consulting report to be professionally typed — and paid for by the students.

Even with Hartman gone, the program put him on a pedestal with self-serving puffery and egregious dishonesty. One of Hartman’s “pets,” the late Sam Levey, wrote a monograph about the program’s history incorporating information about Hartman and his legacy. That monograph failed to address the realities of how Hartman ran the program. In short, it was a cover-up. A snow job. And worse, people at the university and in the program who knew the truth about Hartman let the publication stand as is. What does that mean for the credibility of such academic research? As an editor and publisher, the story would have been fact-checked; and finding these flaws, I would have spiked the story and fired the reporter. I am sure in another time and place, Hartman and Trump would have been great chums.

Finally, although Hartman and his henchmen claimed to train leaders in health management and policy, I have no memory of any Iowa graduate take a strong stand for fixing the health care system. And, from the time I enrolled in the program in 1967 until I left the field and subsequently severed ties with Iowa and the industry, I was never aware of an Iowa leader taking a stand on the radical steps needed to reshape the United States’ medical-health-industrial complex. In fact, strong stands were discouraged.

Meanwhile, in the almost 60 years since my time in the health care system, little of the industry's core has changed. As a nation, we tolerate the capitalist medical-industrial complex. Despite what politicians and others would have you believe, adding drugs to Medicare benefits and passing the Affordable Care Act needed major concessions to BigPharma, BigInsurance and BigEquipment. So while politicians and BigMedia propagandized by touting the benefits of these measures, the truth was buried and the umpteen-year-old so-called health care cost “crisis” continued.

How long have these observations festered? Probably since 1968, when I saw “The Graduate” and failed to understand the message: Live your life as you wish it. But, wait, Don Pardo, “There’s more.” During my second year, I enrolled in a photography course offered through the student union and almost washed my master’s thesis down the darkroom drain. How I wish I had.

After 25 mostly miserable years in the field, I had enough. I took a part-time job and went back to school. It took one journalism course before landing an internship covering the Colorado Legislature’s 1996 session and, then, my first job as a cub reporter. My drive to do investigative reporting scratched my anger itch and fueled my desire to hold to account those who need to be held responsible. I am proud of the work I did in journalism. I cherish the friends, the memories and the awards.

Few would dispute that the health and medical care system is deeply flawed and needs radical repair. “Medicare for All” would be a good start since we know that, despite swipes at government bureaucracy, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is far more efficient than BigInsurance. We need to de-fang the BigPharma, BigInsurance and BigEquipment lobbies. Pundits are only partly right when they lash out at physicians and hospital systems for the exorbitant health care costs. The inflation is driven by the choices forced into legislation by these lobbies. Failure to institute negotiation to lower drug prices for Medicare’s Part D is one example. “Saint” Ronald Reagan’s destruction of “Certificate of Need” and other measures to staunch duplication of services leading to unhealthy competition and inefficiency is another. And the propaganda that “free market” competition was good for health care and medicine? That was another “big lie,” and as false as “trickle down” economics. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud.

Which brings me back to the leadership in the hospital space. Graduate programs like Iowa’s have ceded their legitimacy to call the policy shots. Training administrators to game the system under the guise of fiduciary responsibilities is a cover and the perfect example of Albert Einstein’s definition of crazy. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect a different result; unless of course this is all a kabuki dance with dancers who don’t want to change the tune.

It’s time for the clinicians seize control of the health care system. The leadership of hospitals and hospital systems should lie with physicians and other clinicians. One example of this successful paradigm is the Houston Methodist Hospital system. Those who come through the hospital management programs can be secondary players serving, as Ward Churchill said, “Little Eichmanns.” They and the other specialties like accounting and IT will have their proper roles. But the ship needs navigation by those who most understand what’s really going on at the patient level.

I didn’t have the courage in 1968 to walk out of the program and become a whistleblower. But in 1995 I took the steps that let me do more good than a lifetime of professional cowardice. The 22 years of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable were the most fulfilling of my work life. For those of you who have dreams to follow, do so. Now.

A sermon worth hearing again and again

As far back as 2015, I joined others in predicting we would face a dystopian future with the GOP. That our predictions were accurate, especially as we realized that the parallels to 1930 Germany were the clear and present danger hulking over our nation, the long-term strategy of the right-wing was still below the radar. It wasn’t until 2017, when award-winning Duke University historian Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America” revealed the depth of the march toward fascism. And, wile MacLean showed is the origins of this danger to our country, other books followed that documented the rest of the story.

But, since I’ve’ written far and wide about these works and the exposé, it’s unnecessary to do so here. Rather, what I want to do is preserve a sermon from St. Andres’s Episcopal Church in Amarillo, Texas. Mother Miriam Scott, one of the priests at St. Andrews, grew up in Germany and was well-versed in her country’s history and the acts of the Third Reich. That endowed her sermon with gravitas. Her warnings and conclusions about weaponizing Christianity and Jesus Christ himself, was (and is) a condemnation of the fundamentalist Christian evangelicals embrace of fascism. And, of their corrupted leaders leading their flocks into the hands of those who wish to hurt them. Indeed, Mother Scott labeled, rightly so, weaponizing Jesus was blasphemy.

I have listened to this sermon several times and each time I understand more. I have posted it to Facebook, but that may be too transient. I post it here for more permanence, I hope. Please take the time to listen again and again. It’s important.