Not So Rosy - Kaiser Health Rose Float 'Healthier Tomorrow' Is Riderless

P. Gardner Goldsmith | January 3, 2022
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If you enjoy the wonders of the Tournament of Roses Parade each New Year’s Day, then you might have noticed something awry on January 1.

It wasn’t just the sight of horseback-riding US Marines wearing masks in the open air, while dancers and singers enjoyed life, sans face-diapers. And it wasn’t solely the fact that chatterboxes on ABC have criticized people in Florida for holding open-air concerts, yet they celebrated the return of this great annual event.

It came in the form of medical corporation Kaiser Permanente’s float, which had the dubious distinction of being completely untenanted.

That riderless float told us a few important things, things that imply, as the great 19th Century French economist Frederic Bastiat once said, “what is seen, and not seen.”

What was seen was a float entitled, “A Healthier Tomorrow.”

What was seen was a new-age, one-world, baseless exultation of a utopian, “green,” enviro-edu-med-technocracy, complete with mock-up kids splayed out on giant books, reading about the unquestionable “science”, checking a telescope, promoting “boosters” with teddy bears, standing near a microscope, and even enjoying the “healthy” energy supplied by windmills.

What went unseen were real human beings, the unstated reason they weren’t there, and the economic realities that put into question the Kaiser Permanente (KP) propaganda pushing its “green” energy motif.

According to the Los Angeles Times, KP’s “stated” reason the riders were missing was:

The healthcare system cited Southern California's recent surge in coronavirus cases, driven in part by the Omicron variant, in its decision.

Indeed. The giant western medical corporation issued a press release, stating, in part:

’We must prioritize the health and safety of our front-line medical staff and ensure we are able to treat patients during this recent surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant,’ the statement said.

But, as it was with in Maine, where Governor Janet Mills claimed she was funneling National Guard members into medical facilities because the swell of “Omicron” patients was just too great for facility staff to handle, there’s a lot they’re not saying.

As with Maine, where the governor had been warned that her jab mandate would lead to mass resignations and staff shortages, and which subsequently saw precisely that, Kaiser Permanente is not bothering to mention that it began firing un-jabbed employees months ago.

In November, I wrote an MRCTV report called, “CA Health Facility Security 'Escorts' Nurse From Her Job – For Sticking To Her Religious Beliefs On Vaccine.” It featured video shot by the nurse, as security forced her off the property, and I noted:

“This is the start of the purge, a purge that already saw huge protests by Kaiser Pernamente employees in late August, just after the orders were announced. But the corporation and the politicians and bureaucrats didn’t listen. Instead, they revealed the sham and shame of their ceaseless pandemic pantomime.”

Curiously, this nurse was not on the KP Rose Parade float, and she was not quoted by the LA Times or in the KP press release.

And something else was missing from the KP float. The pretty creation lacked any semblance of economic reality about their “green” and “healthy” tomorrow.

As I noted on Twitter, the float promotes windmill power as if it’s
the future. But government-promoted wind power couldn't have provided enough energy to make the float without much higher costs being incurred, and it could not have moved it for long.

Everything from the vehicle propelling the float, to the vehicles transporting all of its constituent parts, to the vehicles transporting all the people who worked on it, to the heat for the building in which the float was constructed, to the machines on which it was designed, to the glue for the decorations, to the irrigation and chemical tech to plant, grow, harvest, and store the flowers, seeds and other natural materials used to make the float – every aspect of that paean to warmed-over hippy utopianism mixed with political-corporate-medical power was touched in some way by carbon-based energy.

And every aspect of it would cost much more to provide the same result – if the same result could be achieved at all – with “wind” power.

As folks in Texas discovered the hard way last year, wind turbines are inefficient and unreliable, the energy doesn’t store as well as oil, gas, and coal, and the turbines themselves are not as “enviro-friendly” as Kaiser Permanente’s core of corporate copy-writers might think or want to pretend.

Additionally, wind farms cause profound damage to animal life and the environment. As I wrote in 2019, for MRCTV:

(T)he Associated Press has noted that windfarms kill 573,000 birds each year. And, as shocking as it might seem, they also burst bat lungs. The turbines themselves require vast amounts of carbon-using energy to construct, including concrete, steel, and fiberglass blades that, in total, weigh between 800 and 900 tons – per turbine. All of this requires energy, to mine the ore, transport the raw materials, make, and transport and build on site. And the sites require vast access roads that destroy wildlife habitats, not to mention the bizarre health effects people cite when living near the infrasound created by mills, and the energy-intensive process of re-blading and refurbishing needed every 20 years.

You probably didn’t hear that from TV announcers as they described the Kaiser Permanente float rolling along Colorado Boulevard.

Which brings us to the lesson of “What Is Seen And Unseen.”

 

 

In the mid-1800s, French writer and political commentator Claude Frederic Bastiat released a book called, “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen,” and it opened with what might be his most famous essay, entitled “The Broken Window.”

In that essay, Bastiat exposed the inherent practical problems of centrally-planned, government-funded “projects.”

He explained that they prevent individuals from determining for themselves how to use their own earnings. They assume to decide for others what their “opportunity costs” are, and they redirect the flow of useable capital from areas where honest participants would direct it, into politicized areas where consumer satisfaction cannot be judged.

Such government “projects” can come in the form of overt and celebrated “green initiatives” like wind turbines, in the seemingly innocuous forms of “greenspace” parks, or “science investments,” to name a few, or they can come in the guise of regulations imposed “for your own good” – regulations such as the mandates for solar power on new California homes recently imposed by Gavin Newsom and his leftist pals in the state Assembly.

Regardless of its form, the government program, regulation, or “policy” will be celebrated by the politicians promoting it. Their press releases will be seen, and their greenery or “make work” projects will be seen. Their buildings and parks will be seen. The "jobs" they supposedly "create" will be seen.

But what won’t be seen are the multitudinous opportunities that the legitimate owners and earners of the capital have lost. What won’t be seen are all those who would have been engaged to supply them with what they wanted to better their lives, and all the natural ripples they, in turn, create.

In Bastiat’s essay, he comments on someone’s belief that a broken window will benefit the glazier, giving him work. But Bastiat correctly notes that what the homeowner has to give to the glazier just to return the house to normal comes at the cost of something else the owner would have gotten, a choice he is not allowed to make.

To argue that his life is improved by nature or a man breaking his window is to argue that it’s a wise and economically beneficial idea to break everyone’s window, because it will put window glaziers to work.

The costs imposed by government in that absurd idea are analogous to the costs imposed on float-makers who, should the government force wind power on them, would try to work under those political conditions.

Likewise, the resource depletion Kaiser Permanente shows in its lack of employees comes in its acquiescence to jab-mandate thinking.

These costs are clear to anyone who understands economics.

And the moral costs are clear to anyone who understands human nature.

As a result, the Kaiser Permanente Rose Parade float actually revealed a lot. It is a profound lesson for those really willing to look.

Related: CA Passes Mandate: All New Homes Must Be 50% Solar-Powered by 2030 | MRCTV

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