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This post is going to be my collection of thoughts on the news story that happened a few weeks ago, regarding the shooting of the UHC CEO and more specifically the reaction to that event.

Let’s start with some basic information. Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthCare (a health insurance company) was killed in NYC. A couple days later, Luigi Mangione was arrested as the suspect in that shooting.

At first, people were shocked at the shooting of an executive in plain sight in a public space. But then as people realized why the shooting occurred and why Thompson was the target, public sentiment shifted to start supporting Luigi Mangione.

And then other people started reacting to that reaction, by wondering what was wrong with people who would support a killing.

So now I’m going to react to that reaction to a reaction.

First up, are you allowed to be happy when a bad guy gets killed? Proverbs 11:10b says “And when the wicked perish, there is joyful shouting.” And in general Americans were rejoicing when Osama bin Laden was killed. I don’t remember anyone saying the shooter was the bad guy and the victim was not the bad guy in that case. But that doesn’t make it right, the Bible is saying there what happens.

Second up, it is believed that Thompson was the target because he was the head of one of the largest (and worst, in terms of denying claims) health insurance companies. And that’s enough for some people to consider that Thompson was not an innocent victim.

Third up, the government is allowed to take out bad guys, but can individual people? That question is left as an exercise for the reader. I would argue it is not.

Let’s consider the various evil guys that everyone is glad are gone – Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, etc., etc. You should be able to get a pretty good consensus that those were bad guys. But as far as you know, did any of them personally kill anyone? No, they were bad guys that the world was glad to be rid of, because they led their organization and directed others to cause people harm or to suffer or to die.

Now if we take that statement and apply it to health insurance CEOs, you can say they haven’t personally harmed anyone, but they lead their organizations and direct their subordinates to cause people to suffer or to die.

“No,” you may say, “their organization is meant to help people.” Which is ostensibly true. But CEOs don’t get profits and bonuses by helping people, they look out for the well-being of the company, which means directing their employees to find ways to charge more and pay less. And we saw that with lawsuits and such against UHC for increasing their denials of claims. More claims denied = more people suffering, the leader of the organization causing an increasing in the suffering of people is a bad guy = UHC CEO was a bad guy. And that’s the thought process by which people thought the killing was not all bad.

And one could argue that the CEO is helping all the employees in the company by making the company perform better. But does that excuse the CEO from harming other people, or does that make the company’s employees complicit in the harm?

I will argue that both people did wrong, in that both were doing things that God does not like.

Proverbs 3:27 – Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your power to do it.
The UHC CEO certainly had the power to provide good to those who deserved it, or at the very least provide the services that people paid for, and yet he withheld it.

Proverbs 6:16-17 says that the Lord hates hands that shed innocent blood.
This one is a stretch, as I just argued that Thompson was not innocent. Ok, how about this verse?
Romans 12:19 – Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
I suppose one could argue that Mangione was the method by which God exacted His vengeance. That would be a tough one to prove, and I’m not even going to try. Because my point in this post is to show why people are siding with Mangione, not to agree with what he did.

In summary: he took out a bad guy, heroes take out bad guys, therefore he is a hero to the people.

Now that no one is talking about the Fontopian font anymore, it’s time to announce that Font Grill has released a new font.

Introducing: Thorndyke Font

Go download Thorndyke.

I was inspired by the opening credits of The Love Bug movie. Like this:

The story of why the font is called “Thorndyke” is at the link to the font. But I will take this space to say that both the first and second Herbie movies had an great set of cars. Someone should have preserved all the cars that were in the races. Not because they were in the movie, but just because they were fun cars.

It is time once again to update Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a more accurate football prediction method.
The 2024 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results (wins-losses):

• ITP: 67%
• MPWHFA: 65%
• MYW: 65%

This was the first time in a few years that MPWHFA was not the top percentage. The NFL is setup to promote parity, with the draft setup in reverse order and teams’ schedules setup with like teams. So there shouldn’t be a big disparity with a bunch of teams at the top and a bunch at the bottom. But this year was an outlier, with more good teams having really good records and more bad teams having really bad records. Not by a huge margin, but noticeable. And that situation favored the ITP method, which follows win trends.

If you think you have a formula that can predict the winner of an NFL game better than 62.7% of the time, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.
(For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.)

There was news recently that Jeff Bezos was to spend $600 million on his wedding. He denied it, which these days is part of the PR script for modern celebrities or companies – something gets leaked, the main character denies it, then it turns out to be true. But in this case the supposed wedding date came and went and there were no follow-up reports of said wedding actually happening. Which if a wedding did cost $600,000,000 you would think it would be hard to hide it.

Anyway, before it was denied and subsequently didn’t happen, there were a lot of reactions to the news. So now you’re getting my thoughts on the matter.

My first thought was how do you spend that much money on a wedding? Maybe buying a private island and making that the destination for a destination wedding, but the reports said it would happen in Aspen CO.

After digesting various reactions, my conclusion is that it would have been good for him to spend that much money on a wedding. Yes, it is ridiculous, but he has ridiculous amounts of money so that should be par for the course.

No matter what you think of Bezos or other billionaires, the fact is that he has that money. The options now are he can keep it or he can spend it. Of those options, isn’t spending it the better choice for the general economy?

I imagine the money would have gone to a number of local businesses in the Aspen area. Certainly not all the money, but even a small percentage of half a billion dollars would be noticeable to area businesses. And yes other areas besides Aspen would probably need it more, but my point is the money is moving from a billionaire to non-billionaires.

Some of you may be thinking that sounds like trickle-down economics and you don’t like trickle-down economics, but again what’s the alternative – you’d rather Bezos keep that money to himself? I know some people may have other ideas of what should be done via new laws or such, but I’m looking at this based on how things are today.

And yes, he could give the money away to charity like Gates or Buffet are doing, but I see that as a subset of the spending option. Or maybe I should call it the not-keeping option. Either way, you’re giving money to someone else for them to do something with it. The difference between charity and not is if the giver receives a tangible benefit. But to the general economy, there’s not much difference – $600m moves from one person to an area. Better the money moves that direction than the other.

Today is a holiday, and I’m not posting anything today.