Month: September 2018

Discrimination–that is making business decisions in hiring or doing business on a basis other than price and quality (as they relate to the decision)–has a cost.  There is certainly a cost to those discriminated against.  These are obvious in the cases of people not hired, people unable to shop at certain places, or people whose goods or services are not bought because of who they are.  But discrimination also has a cost to those doing the discrimination.

As one extreme example, a pro basketball team owner who refused to hire black players, would be at a clear disadvantage over teams that were not so discriminatory.  Thus even if the owner of such a team is personally highly prejudiced, he will, nevertheless have a strong incentive to hire the best players he can get, regardless of their race because winning teams means filling more seats in the stands, more people watching the game on television (and thus more ad revenue for those broadcasts) and more merchandise sold.  All of that translates to more money.

Other cases may be less dramatic but the principle is there.  A shop that decides to turn away business because of the race of a potential customer is just begging for someone to come along, accept that business as well as the more “conventional” business, and, thanks to the larger customer base, out-compete him.

Consider also Major League Baseball.  There were a limited number of teams in the major leagues and the setup meant it was next to impossible for new competing teams to enter that closed market.  It functioned, basically, as a cartel, a highly effective one of its type.  So long as all the individual businesses in that cartel agreed to discriminate against black players, then they could get away with it.  But let just one team break ranks–like the (then) Brooklyn Dodgers did in 1947 when they hired Jackie Robinson–and the floodgates open.  Other team owners, regardless of what they might personally feel about race, opened their own teams to black players.

Why would they do that?  Well, look at the results.  Over the decade from 1949 to 1958 Black players won National League MVP in seven out of those 10 years–one, Roy Campanella, winning three times.  If, once the Dodgers opened the way, the other teams didn’t start hiring Black Players then all of those players would have been playing for the Dodgers.  As it was, the Dodgers did have three of those five players.  I guess some folk were just a little slow.

But what, some may ask, about the Jim Crow south?

What about it?  Let’s take a look at those Jim Crow Laws.  Jim Crow Laws.  Jim Crow Laws.  Laws.  This wasn’t a case of businesses deciding who they would and wouldn’t do business with, and facing the consequences of turning away paying business or not.  It was a set of business practices enforced by law.

Once again we have the actions of government blamed on the private sector.

This matter of cost is why the so called “wage gap” between the sexes is…questionable at best.  If women earned 77 cents for every dollar earned by men presumably in the same job and for the same quantity and quality of work, then someone could pay women 80 cents for what other companies are paying men, hire away all the good women workers (paying more than the other places), be able to hire five women where the other place hires four men, and produce more the goods and services at a lower price.  Much smaller production cost differences than that have more than once allowed one competitor to crush another.

That this doesn’t happen suggests that there’s considerably more to the issue than the political rhetoric would suggest.  But that’s a topic for another time.  For this case, simply note that the supposed if it were real, would come at a considerable cost to the discriminating companies.

Discrimination costs.  It costs the discriminator less, perhaps, than the one discriminated against, and the cost may not be obvious but it is there.  Left to themselves businesses will tend to become less discriminatory because they’ll want the customers spending money.  They’ll want the workers.  They’ll want the business.

Most of the time government intervention to “fix” things merely makes things worse.  The only role where it actually helps in anything like a consistent manner is by intervening in the case where people use force, chiefly violence, not just to discriminate for themselves, but to impose their discriminatory practices on others.  This is often a legitimate matter for government.  For the rest, it can be left to the economy and the market.

The market may not give a perfect solution, but government rarely gives a better one.

Given yesterday’s topic, this blast from the past seems to fit:

People like to talk about the problems with private medicine in the US but don’t recognize the problems that can come with, or even because of, socialized medicine.

Well, I’ve had some experiences of my own with “socialized medicine” over the years.  Let’s start with the UK.

UK1: When I was in the Air Force, I lived in the UK for two years. One of my co-workers was married. The small base we were assigned to did not have its own hospital. Any medical care beyond cold and flu bugs that wasn’t severe enough to be evacuated was handled by local UK hospitals. This included my co-worker’s wife’s pregnancy.

It was a second child so the pregnancy was “routine” (It Says Here). She had a problem with hemorrhaging with the first child but a second was “routine”, by policy. The doctors were warned of the problem but a second pregnancy was routine. After the child was born, she started bleeding. She bled to death in the hospital. A “routine” childbirth (even though the first had had the exact same problem and the doctors had been told that) and she bled to death in the f*king hospital.

Oh, your wife died? Too bad, so sad. But how could we know something like this could happen since it was a routine pregnancy? You told us? But it was a routine pregnancy.

***

UK2: At the same time there was a great debate going on among doctors regarding the subject of “crib death” (was still being called “SIDS”–Sudden Infant Death Syndrome–back then I believe). A very popular theory was that it was a result of maternal neglect/negligence if not outright what would now be called Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy. That “theory” had been thoroughly debunked in the US for literally decades. But in the UK a mother who just lost her baby was as likely as not to have the added burden of having her doctor blame her for the loss.

***

Another “poster child” for socialized medicine is Japan.

Japan1: My wife’s uncle had cancer. I visited him in the hospital once. Filthy place. Seriously. If I ever get seriously ill or injured in Japan, stabilize me and get me out of there if you have to send me on deck space on a freighter. That’s only moderate hyperbole.

Eventually he was deemed an “unlikely prospect” for a cure. Treatment was cut off including pain medication. In the end he ended up dousing himself with gasoline and lighting himself on fire. I am dead serious. No hyperbole. He literally burned himself to death rather than face the untreated pain of his progressing cancer.

***

Japan2: While visiting Japan on business I attended a Judo club as a guest (Judo was my sport of choice at that time). In the course of randori I managed to sprain my shoulder. Not “serious” in any major way but lordy did it hurt. I could not buy over the counter pain medication anywhere. Not aspirin, not acetaminophen, not ibuprofin, not naproxen sodium, nothing. They have some topical “pain patches” (and predated their availability in the US) but those were worthless for anything like this). The only “pain killer” available was ethanol but . . . I don’t drink. Short of going to the hospital (and my guide at the company I was visiting did suggest that but see above) there was nothing I could do except apply ice and tough it out.

***

Japan3: While returning from another business trip I tripped on an escalator in Tokyo station and sprained my ankle. It didn’t seem to bad at first but by the time I got to Narita it was quite painful. Fortunately (yeah, right) there was an actual medical clinic in Narita right off the walkway from the train station. I stopped in there (Yeah, I’m not covered by their “national health care” but I could pay for it so I figured….)

When I got in, I was told simply that the orthopedist was not in and so nobody could look at my ankle. Excuse me? A sprain, something anybody in the US with MD, or even PA, after their name could handle and they couldn’t even look at it and splint it/tape it up/ or something? They had to have a specialist come in for even a sprained ankle?

So the question there becomes, are doctors who aren’t specialists in orthopedics not trained in diagnosis and treatments of things like sprains or are they simply forbidden based on the government control that always comes with government payment?

***

And those are just the experiences I was personally involved with.  I also know some ex-pats from various countries with “socialized medicine”.

This is, of course, the point where someone will say “but I’ve experienced socialized medicine and had good experiences.”  Well, does your good experiences make my bad experiences go away any more than my good experiences with American health care make the bad experiences that are cited as reasons for going to “socialized medicine” go away?  If those bad experiences count on the one side then mine count on the other.  And once you recognize that “socialized medicine” has its own problems the choice of which is “better” is no longer so “obvious” as proponents would like to claim.  If all we had to go on were a listing of anecdotes about “bad results” and “if onlies” there would be nothing to choose from between them because both have their anecdotes.  But that’s not all we have to go with.

On the flip side, the castigating of medicine, insurance, and medical support (equipment, pharmaceuticals, and what not) being “profit motivated” has come up in another forum.  Part of this is recap from an earlier, shorter posting on the same subject but here’s my response:

“There are certain necessities in life, and medication is one.” So how did we get along before these medicines were invented/discovered? And even if so, you might want to consider how many new, effective, treatments and medications have come out of the West where people have, to some extent at least, been allowed to profit from their work than have come out of, say, the old Soviet Union over the same time frame.

You (that’s you personally, whoever you might be) have access to far more in the way of medical treatment and medications because companies like Dow and Lilly were allowed to make money than if we had followed some ivory tower “good of society” model.

At my age, I take quite a few medications. More than half of them are “$4 generics” at my local Kroger, that’s $4 flat without insurance, and that’s medicines that didn’t even exist when I was a boy, medicines that only exist because companies like Lilly and Dow have been profitable places for people to invest money, have paid high salaries to attract some scary smart researchers and technicians to develop these new medicines and treatments.

Without these newer medicines I would be limited to the medicines my parents and grandparents had, medicines that were less effective, or with more and more severe side effects.  Thanks, but no.

Companies, with a profit motive developed smaller and less expensive X-Ray units.  Because of this my doctor has one in his office.  When I have an impact or joint injury I can get an X-Ray right there–immediately–without needing to go to the ER or scheduling an appointment with a hospital radiology department.  Less expensive and quicker diagnosis.

The same profit motive led to the development of portable EKG machines which my doctor also keeps in his office.  My annual exam includes an EKG every time.  Should I start to develop heart problems early diagnosis means early treatment with much better chances for my continued breathing. (I’m in favor of breathing and would like to continue doing it.) [Edit, 2017:  As of my last exam that had changed.  New regulation.  Ne government regulations, had required the insurance to no longer cover EKG’s as part of the annual exam.  Now they’re only covered after some heart problem is indicated.  Thus, thanks to the interference of government “helping” with health care, I am at more risk and the use of diagnostic tools that might save my life is delayed.]

The same profit motive led to the CAT scan unit being right there in my local hospital after my last auto accident. (Rear ended by a Tahoe while I was leaning forward to change stations on the radio putting me at about the worst possible posture for a whiplash injury.)  They’re everywhere.  They’re everywhere because people with profit motive made them available.

The same profit motive led to improvements in glucometers so I can quickly and reliably check my blood sugar with less pain and fuss than my mother did a scant two decades ago.

I could go on and on.

And if I can’t afford the latest and greatest? Well, I didn’t have it before either so I can’t really complain that much. And if only the latest and greatest can save my life and I don’t have it? Well, sucks to be me in that case, I guess. But although I may not have it, my daughter will. After all, yesterday’s “latest and greatest” is today’s “cheap and ubiquitous”.  But hamstring the Lillys and Dows of the world by undercutting profit and going to some Marxist “according to his need” (which is what that “they are necessities” amounts to) and she won’t.

And that, I can never forgive.

You can keep your socialized medicine.  Just keep it far away from me.

Lately my reading (well, listening on audiobook) has featured a lot of Thomas Sowell’s writings on Economics.  I started with Basic Economics, continued with Applied Economics, and is now continuing with Economic Facts and Fallacies.  I have long been wont to talk about the economics behind things in my writings here, basing that writing on more the introductory economics I studied in College and various readings over the years.  Since I’ve mostly talked about things in very basic terms that’s been mostly adequate.  And is, frankly far better than a certain Congressional Candidate who boasts of having a bachelors in Economics and yet who gets the most basic things utterly and completely wrong.

That’s neither hear nor there.  I wrote what follows a little over four years ago.  And in light of my current studies, there’s not much I would change except for a bit of expansion.  So, that’s what I’ll do here.

Over on FaceBook an image posted a Senator’s facebook page asked the question “why are prescription drugs so expensive in the US? It also claimed to answer it: “We are the only major country without a national healthcare program and the pharmaceutical industry can charge whatever it wants.”

Well, let’s leave aside that latter part which ignores things like competition and supply/demand curves. (What?  You’ve never price shopped among different treatments?  Asked if there was a lower cost alternative to some expensive medication?  Whyever not?  I have.)  Instead, let’s look at what effect a “national healthcare program” really has on the cost of medicine.

The production of new medicines and passing the extensive testing required to get them approved is extremely expensive. That cost, and the cost of those medicines that do not get final approval has to be recouped somewhere. Now, all these places with “national healthcare” are a monopsony (that’s “single buyer” in the same way that “monopoly” is “single seller”) and, thus, can dictate the price they will pay. This means the cost of development cannot be recouped there. But it has to be recouped somewhere.
And that means that we’re subsidizing medical research for the rest of the world. Even if something is developed overseas–One of the medicines I used to take (a beta blocker–not allowed while I’m on allergy shots) was developed in Great Britain and only just “aged out” to having generics available–guess who pays to recoup the development costs? Yep. We do.

These other countries don’t make those high fixed costs for bringing new medicines and treatments to market go away.  They simply refuse to pay them.  As a result, we not only subsidize our own research into new medicines and treatments, we subsidize the research of the entire rest of the world.

The problem is, if we stopped doing that–by whatever means, national health care, some “fair price” law, whatever–then research into new medicines would also stop. We could “enjoy” the same level of medical progress as, say, Yugoslavia.

Don’t think so?  Get a copy of an insurance formulary (many of them are available).  These list the various approved medicines at various copay price points.  Go through and list the ones that were developed in the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cuba, or similar highly “socialist” society where it’s all “good of the State” rather than profit motive.

Did you even have to turn the paper over to continue the list on the reverse side?  I didn’t think so.

So, take away “recouping costs” and “making money” from the equation and go instead to  top-down government funded and dictated research and medical progress essentially goes away.  You may reduce the costs of what you have now, but what you have now is all you will ever have.  Again, you don’t make the cost of medical advancement, of bringing new medications and treatments to market by such limits on pricing.  You simply refuse to pay them.  When means, in the end, they don’t get done.

So why, you may ask, do the pharmaceutical manufacturers sell to these other countries if they can’t recoup their development costs?  The answer lies in a concept called “marginal cost” also known as “incremental cost.”  Marginal cost is the added cost of producing one more of something.  If you’re making 10,000 pills, the marginal cost is how much more you have to spend to produce 10,001 instead.  Now, so long as you have some way, some how, to make back the fixed costs you can make money selling more so long as the price is higher than the marginal cost.  Sell 100,000 pills in the US priced to recoup costs and make a profit.  Sell 100,000 pills in the US at the same price and also sell 10,000 in France just a bit more than the marginal cost and make a somewhat bigger profit.  But without that 100,000 selling in the US at a price that recoups cost, the 10,000 to France won’t exist.

As I said, we’re subsidizing the world.

Note that this also means that medicines for rare diseases and disorders will also be extremely expensive.  The cost of bringing a new medicine to market doesn’t get cheaper because a smaller number of people have the problem it’s meant to treat.  Those fixed costs are just as high but you have fewer “doses” to recoup those costs.  If it costs $100 million to bring a new medicine to market and you can rely on selling a hundred million doses, those fixed costs work out to $1 a dose. (I’m going to ignore adjusting for future value vs. present value to keep this simple.  It would actually be somewhat more than $1 a dose because money from future sales is worth less than the same money now.) If, however, you can only count on 10,000 doses, then those fixed costs work out to $10,000 a dose, even if the medicine were free to make.

That’s an extreme case to demonstrate the principle which applies across the board whether the number you can expect to sell is a billion, a hundred million, ten million, or three.  That’s what you have to recoup the fixed costs.

The bright side is that once that cost is recouped, prices do come down. Half the medicines I take every day are “$4 generics” (that’s not a co-pay. That’s what the pharmacy charges). And the ones that aren’t are mostly in the $10-20 range. But all of them were expensive during that limited window the developer had to recoup costs.

The Senator in question, of course, knows all this. At the very least, someone on his staff could explain it to him if he asked. But it’s much more useful for him to use the cost as a means to grab even more government power.  Remember, governments don’t make decisions based on economic thinking and what effects something will have down-the-road (what Sowell called “thinking beyond stage one”).  They make decisions on what sounds good to a population that largely also doesn’t do economic down-the-road thinking and only has to look good until the next election. (And by the time the down-the-road effects come into play, they can usually find someone or something else to blame and not their foolish economic choices.)

And that’s what this is really about–a power grab. The more dependent you are on government, the more they own you.

When it comes to medicines and new treatments, we’re subsidizing the world.  Even when it’s a foreign company that makes the advance, they do so because they can recoup their large fixed costs here.  But if that’s the price for continued development of new prescription drugs and other treatments, I can live with it.  It’s not the ideal but if you end that and you end medical progress, which means my daughter, when she gets older, won’t have anything better than I have today.

And that I can never forgive.

Epic journeys through space and time

Whether exploring the solar system in the near future or venturing to worlds of magic and mystery, these fifteen stories take you on a journey to other universes.

Included are stories from the FutureTech Industries series, from the Knights of Aerioch, and an assortment of stand-alone tales.

The stories may be short of length, but they are not short of wonder.

So climb aboard and see what these other worlds have to offer.

Contents:
FRONTISPIECE
ABOUT THIS WORK
THE FTI UNIVERSE
The Future is now
Match point
EMT
Rainy Days and Moon Days
Live To Tell
THE WORLD OF AERIOCH
Treva’s Children
The Kinmar
Time for tears
OTHER FANTASY WORLDS
Oruk Means Hard Work
The Spaewife
Donner Rothskegg
In the Hall of the Giant
God of Thunder
A JOURNEY IN THE DARK
Study in Black and Red
Plague Station
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER WORKS BY DAVID L. BURKHEAD
CONTACT THE AUTHOR

Short one today.  I had a minor accident this morning.  Long story short, a fairly large glob of hot grease spattered onto my foot (my bare foot) and, well, I am allowed to put a shoe over it so long as I don’t pop the blisters–which is hard to do until the blisters deflate of their own so it’s been one shoe and one stockinged foot all day.  I’ve been a bit distracted.

That aside…

Whenever one complains about misbehavior in the public sector the cry from certain segments goes out “That’s just a few bad apples.  Most are…”

Depending on what precise sector is misbehaving the segments raising that cry may differ, but the cry itself is generally the same.  We can’t blame all of them because of “a few bad apples.”

What these people forget is the origin of the expression about bad apples.

The old aphorism was “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch.”  And it’s true.

If you have a bad apple snugged in among a bunch of good apples, the microorganisms in the bad one will spread to the previously good apples causing them, in turn, to rot.  And they, in turn will spread the rot to other.  The one bad apple, given time, will spoil the whole batch.

What you need to do is remove the bad apple as soon as it is found to keep the rot from spreading to others.  It needs to be completely removed from all the apples.  You can compost it or feed it to livestock that isn’t bothered by the decay, but it absolutely cannot be allowed to remain among the apples that one intends to remain good.

The application of the metaphor should be obvious.  Far from being an excuse to be dismissed, “a few bad apples” indicates something that needs immediate attention, “apples” that need to be removed immediately and permanently from the “batch”.

When, instead, you get dismissal of the problem as “a few bad apples” and those bad apples remain in the batch that’s not an indication that the problem is too small to merit attention.

It’s an indication that the rot has already spread.

I wrote this back in 2010, partly in response to the so-called “Affordable Care Act”, but it really does sum up socialism, “democratic” or otherwise. (All “Democratic” does is put some extra steps before the totalitarian end-game.)

September 2, 31 BC may not exactly mark the end of the Roman Republic, but it does mark the final battle toward the shift from Republic to Empire.

On November 23, 42 BC, a few months after the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Second Triumvirate consisting of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, Mark Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus took power in the Roman Republic.  In fact, some historians mark the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire from that date.  The Triumvirate had a five year term.  And while the first five years seemed to go reasonably well, the Triumvirate was unstable.  Antony hated Octavian.  Lepidus favored Antony but felt overshadowed by both of the others.  Still, all seemed well enough for the Triumvirate to be renewed in 38 BC.  It was then that things began to unravel.

In 36 BC Lepidus raised a large army of 14 legions to help subdue a revolt in Sicily.  Lepidus, believing that Octavian was treating him more like a subordinate than an equal, used his success in Sicily, both in being the first to land troops and capture of several of the main towns to assert that Sicily should be absorbed into his sphere of influence.  After some negotiation he suggested that Octavian could have Sicily and Africa, in return for Lepidus’ old provinces in Spain and Gaul, which provinces should have been his under the Lex Titia which formed the Triumvirate in the first place.

Octavian used this as an opportunity to declare that Lepidus was attempting to seize power and was in rebellion.  To add to that, Lepidus’ own legions deserted him for Octavian.  As a result, Lepidus was stripped of all power save that of the Pontifex Maximus (chief high priest of the college of pontiffs) and sent into exile in Circeii.

With Lepidus out of the way, that left Octavian and Antony with their bitter personal enmity.  Traditionally, one way folk have cemented alliances in history has been via political marriages, and Antony was married to Octavia, Octavian’s sister.  For his part Octavian was married to Antony’s stepdaughter Claudia Pulchra.  However, once Antony moved to Alexandria and openly lived with Cleopatra, siring children with her.

Octavian began a war in Illirium (modern day Croatia, Boznia and Herzegovenia, et al).  Antony, for his part, prepared for a campaign in Parthia.

Antony found himself overextended and defeated in Parthia and relied on Cleopatra to bring him supplies.  He turned his attention from their to Albania where he met with more success.  With Albania conquered, he read out a declaration, known as the Donations of Alexandria, granting territories to Cleopatra’s children.

When the second term of the Triumvirate (although not having been a trio for 3 years) expired in 33 BC, Antony continued to use the title “Triumvir”.  Despite that he wrote to the Senate saying that he did not wish to be reappointed but that he hoped the senate would regard him as their champion against the ambitions of Octavian.

Meanwhile, Antony complained that, among other things, Octavian exceeded his power by deposing Lepidus.  Octavian, in his turn, complained that Antony, among other things, had no business in Egypt.  There’s a lot of he said, he said there.

Octavian obtained a copy of Antony’s will by illegal means.  It revealed that Antony had left substantial legacies to his children by Cleopatra and plans to have his body, after his death, sent to Alexandria for burial.

These various complaints soon erupted into open conflict.  Octavian, by publishing Antony’s will was able to portray him as an agent of Cleopatra and create a violent outburst of feeling against him culminating in a proclamation of war against Cleopatra.

Antony meant to seize the initiative by launching a naval attack on the Italian peninsula but on seeing the approach guarded by a squadron of Octavian’s ships, he retreated to winter in Patrae while most of his fleet waited in the Ambracian Gulf.  He scorned offers made by Octavian for a conference and both sides made ready to do battle the next year.

The first part of the year was mostly jockeying for position, with Octavian having some modest successes on the coasts of Greece that were meant to divert Antony’s attention.  Antony, for his part, refused to be drawn out being busy gathering his forces from the various places they had wintered.

Finally, the two fleets met on September 2, 31 BC.  Antony’s fleet of 140 large war galleys, and another large force of Cleopatra’s ships, sailed out of the gulf to be met by Octavian’s fleet of 260 warships commanded by the experienced admiral Agrippa.  Antony’s smaller numbers were compensated by his possession of many large quinremes and quadriremes.  Their larger size made them difficult to board by men on the smaller Liburnian ships and provided a superior platform to rain down missile fire on Octavian’s ships.  For his part, Octavian’s ships were more maneuverable and able to duck in for a quick attack then retreat to relative safety.  Their crews were also better trained, better fed, and better rested.

Add in that one of Antony’s generals, Quintus Dellius, defected before the battle taking Antony’s battle plans with him and the scene was set.

Octavian, aware of Antony’s plan to attempt to use his biggest ships to drive back Agrippa’s forces on the north end of the line simply used his ships’ greater maneuverability and retreated ahead of Antony in good order.  The battle continued all morning and into the afternoon without decisive result.

Once the battle had moved out into the sea, Cleopatra’s ships, turned to retreat toward Egypt.  A favorable wind came up and soon they were sailing out of sight.

Antony, on seeing this, believed that panic had driven the retreat and that all was lost.  He turned and followed the flying squadron.  As it generally does, particularly when it’s the leader who flees, the panic spread fast.  Some ships tossed their heavy fighting gear overboard in an effort to lighten the vessels to allow them to flee more quickly.  Others fought on but now even more severely outnumbered, they soon succumbed.

Antony, for his part, tried to make the best of a bad situation.  He burned ships he could no longer man to deny them to his enemy.

The Battle of Actium was over.  The war was not…quite.  It would be some months before Octavian’s growing forces finally completed the defeat of Antony’s dwindling ones.  In the end, Antony, believing false rumors that Cleopatra had committed suicide stabbed himself in the stomach.  He did not die at once and, on learning that Cleopatra was still alive had himself taken to where she hid and so died in her arms.  According to the tale, about two weeks later, Cleopatra did take her own life by the bite of an asp.  Some have questioned that tale and suggest that Octavian simply had her assassinated, as he had her son by Julius Caesar, Caesarion, killed later that month but there is no evidence to support that and it remains but speculation.

With Octavian’s victory at the Battle of Actium, he had undisputed control of the Roman Mediterranean.  And with the later final defeat and deaths of Antony and Cleopatra he was undisputed leader of the institutions of Rome, marking the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

I’m cranking down hard on this one, coming close to the big finish.  So here’s a snippet from a WIP

Reed and I sat looking at each other for some time.  I really needed to talk to Matei.  First rule had always been to keep the secret.  But, like with Ware, Reed already knew.  Ware had put together the evidence but Reed had a vampire captive.  Poor Gerald.  He must have been picked up and turned as soon as he had arrived in Seattle.

Wait a minute, I thought.  Seattle?  Something that Reed had said poked at me.

I leaned forward. “Mr. Reed?”

“Special Agent Reed.”

I nodded. “Special Agent Reed.  Which office are you with?”

“I don’t see why that…”

“Are you here in an official capacity?”

Ware turned a puzzled gaze in my direction. “Ms. Herzeg?”

I smiled at him then returned to Reed. “Special Agent, your office?”

“I’m with the Seattle office, if it matters,” he said.

“And your office sent you more than halfway across the country rather than contacting someone local here?”

He turned sullen eyes to me.  I smiled.

Ware stood. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, Special Agent Reed, Ms. Herzeg.”

He squeezed past me on the way to the door, his arm brushing my shoulder in passing.

I leaned back and grinned at Reed, pretty sure I had his number and that Ware had caught on too.

A few minutes later, Ware returned. “Funny way to spend your vacation, Special Agent Reed.  When I mentioned to your supervisor that you were here trying to take over my case, he said you were on psychiatrically ordered leave following the death of your partner.”

Ware pushed past me again, his hand stopping for just a moment on the back of my neck.  I did not think he was even aware of the contact, but I was.  I gritted my teeth.  I had to keep a hold on my feelings.  Whatever I was feeling for Ware, the middle of the case was not the place for it.  And once the case was over I would be going back to Nashville and… No, it was a bad idea all around.

“So, Special Agent Reed–” Ware’s words jerked me back to the present. “–who has no official standing on this investigation at all, what am I to do with you?”

Reed dropped into his chair and seemed to sag.  I almost felt sorry for him.  Then I remembered Gerald.  While Gerald had never been a friend, exactly, he deserved much better than a brutal death his body used by whatever cause a corpse to rise to feast on human blood.  Gerald deserved all of my sympathy and, given the opportunity I would do the only thing I could do for him.  Kill the thing that was using his body.

“Maybe,” I said then stopped.

“Ms. Herzeg?” Ware looked at me.

“Well, Detective, we all want the same thing, right?  We want the attacks to stop and we want this…cult…ended.”

“Cult.” Reed sneered.

“Cult.” I stared Reed in the eyes.  He could either play along or not.

After several long seconds, Reed nodded.

“So, Detective,” I turned back to Ware. “Perhaps, even without official standing, we could share some information back and forth and maybe find something that will help break the case.”

Ware thought for a moment. “Since these cases appear to be connected, we should be talking to each other.  But for some reason I haven’t even heard from Seattle that there is a connected event.” He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, resting his chin on folded hands. “Why is that, Special Agent?”

“You think we want to tell people that we have a vampire in holding?” Reed shook his head. “I’m not crazy, you know that.”

“Well, jury’s still out on that.”

Reed flashed Ware an irritated look. “I made the mistake of telling the shrink what I saw.  She, of course, doesn’t know about…” He waved at his phone. “So I’m on psychiatric leave because I admitted to something my bosses don’t want to admit exists.”

“So they’re keeping secret information that might help me stop the bastards killing people, killing kids for God’s sake, in my city?” Ware slapped his hands on the desk and stood.

Reed jumped to his feet as well. “One of those things killed my partner and…”

“I have at least twenty-three dead bodies, college kids, and that’s just last night.  Your partner was a volunteer, putting his neck out for the job.  These?  They shouldn’t have to worry about more than drinking too much at their next kegger.”

“Gentlemen?” I said softly.

“My partner never expected…”

“Gentlemen!” I did not have the energy to push but I did put some force into my voice.  They both turned and stared at me. “Perhaps this is not the time to have this argument.  I have no authority over either of you, but if an outside voice might be able to interject a little reason, I’d suggest that you both cool off and you–” I pointed at Reed. “–leave Detective Ware your card.  Give us a chance to go over these reports.  And perhaps we can talk about this tomorrow morning with–” I sighed theatrically. “–cooler heads.”

While talking I caught Ware’s eye and surreptitiously tapped the pocket that held my phone.  I hoped he would catch the hint.

I really needed to talk to Matei but I couldn’t, not yet, not until sundown.

It’s not actually Labor Day related, just I’ve been busy so this is a quick post.

Just running through “related videos” on YouTube.  I do sometimes wonder about their algorithm.

Okay, the video on this one is a bit much in places even for me.  Still…

Really?  How does YouTube go from the above to this?

And that should do for today.