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a-splash-of-stucky · 7 years

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I Know This Game | One

Pairings: Loki x Foster!Reader || Bucky x Foster!Reader

Summary: The past, the present, an email, a phone call and some reminiscing

Warnings: Language, discussion of mental problems.

Notes: A re-post. Fic inspired by ‘Eyes Closed’ by Halsey.

IKTG Masterlist

When you step into the elevator, you catch a glimpse of your reflection in the mirror and let out a resigned sigh. It’s obvious that you’ve been crying. In fact, ‘crying’ is probably putting things nicely; it would be more accurate to say that you look like you’ve been dragged through hell and back. Your eyes are puffy, there are flecks of mascara on your cheeks, your red nose puts Rudolph to shame, and let’s not even get started on your hair. You fix yourself up as best as you can with the concealer and wet wipes you keep in your purse, but the elevator arrives at your floor before you can do much.

You’ve only been to Pepper’s office once before. A distant part of your brain marvels at how sharply contrasted this visit is to your last one. The emotions, the situation, the reason — everything is different, but ironically, none of this is reflected physically. The office itself remains unchanged. It’s walls are still tastefully decorated with gorgeous pieces of abstract art, and the furniture exudes business professionalism, without looking bland and boring. You stride over to her desk, wanting to get this visit over and done with as soon as possible.

Pepper is hunched over a Stark tablet, brow deeply furrowed in concentration. You rap sharply on the frosted glass door and her head whips up.

“Ah, Y/N,” Pepper says, setting her tablet aside and standing up to greet you. The smile she puts on seems a little forced around the edges. “Please, have a seat,” she urges, gesturing towards the chair in front of her desk. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Water?”

You shake your head as you sink into the — surprisingly comfortable — black swivel chair. Of course, this being Stark Industries and all, you expect Tony to settle for nothing less. “I’d rather just get this over with, Pepper,”, you say, your voice betraying how exhausted you really feel.

She nods curtly, immediately stepping into business mode. “Certainly, Y/N, Tony has…notified me of your intentions. I’ve drawn up the necessary paperwork, but I’d like to have a discussion with you, if that’s okay,”.

You nod your assent. This you can deal with. Briskness, order and streamlined efficiency. It’s a kind of stability that you crave after the mess of a day you’ve just had. Secretly, you’re thankful and a little awed that Pepper is able to remain so professional with you, despite the surprisingly close relationship the two of you have developed over the past couple of years.

“Sure Pepper, let’s talk,” you murmur, scooting your chair a little closer to the table.

Pepper laces her fingers together and rests her chin on top of them, looking at you with a completely neutral gaze. She clears her throat, “Well, the only thing I really have to ask is: are you sure? You’ve been such a wonderful asset to the team, that I’d hate to see you go. Obviously, I understand that working in such an environment given the…events that have happened would be difficult, to say the least, but—I just don’t want you to make any spur of the moment decisions that you might regret, here,”.

You hesitate before answering, wanting to give her your most truthful response. “I understand your concern, I really do,” you say slowly, “It’s been amazing working with the team. And, we both know…that at some point, it stopped becoming work and it just became life, right? But I—I’m hurt, Pepper. More than you can ever imagine,”. Unexpectedly, tears burn behind your eyelids and you roughly scrub the back of your hand across your eyes to brush them away. You take a shuddery breath, willing yourself to keep it together for a few minutes more.

“I can’t go back there, Pepper, I can’t. I—I don’t think I can face them, any of them, knowing what they did,” you say quietly.

She nods in sympathy. “Alright, Y/N, it seems like you’ve made your mind up. As per your contract, you’ll be given three months salary in advance, just to have something to tide you over whilst you find your footing again. I’ve written a letter of recommendation for you, as well,”. Pepper hesitates, chewing her bottom lip before continuing, “If — and I understand that this is a big if — you should ever, ever change your mind…I won’t hesitate to re-employ you. Perhaps not with the team, per se, but maybe within Stark industries itself?”

You smile gratefully, amazed that this woman has such an enormous capacity for generosity. “Thank you, Pepper. I’ll certainly keep that offer in mind,”. She nods brusquely in acknowledgement of your thanks. Then, she sets a pen and a stack of papers in front of you, the places requiring your signature marked with blue page flags. When you go to pick up the pen, you discover that your hand is trembling slightly.

After signing where you need to, you hand everything back to her. As she arranges the papers into an orderly pile at the edge of her desk, Pepper asks, “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do after this?”

You shrug, “I’d like to try and set up my own practice. What with my time serving in the military, plus my time with the team, I should think that I have enough experience for that,”.

“That’s wonderful, Y/N. I wish you all the best,”. There’s a note of wistful finality in her tone that you take as your cue to leave. The two of you stand, and Pepper walks you to the door.

“Thank you, Ms Potts, for all that you’ve done for me,”, you say sincerely, holding your hand out for her to shake.

Pepper smiles, “No. Thank you for all that you’ve done for us. I wish we could’ve parted on better terms, but—,”.

You shake your head, indicating that you’d rather not discuss the situation, and she wisely chooses to drop the subject. “Well — and I am being serious here — if you ever need anything, any help whatsoever, my door is always open,”.

You’re overcome with a sudden burst of emotion, and, without thinking you wrap your arms around her in a brief hug. “Thank you, Pepper,”, you whisper fiercely.

You do your best to sob as silently as you can when you dash out of her office.

—————————— Six Months Later ——————————

Nick Fury levels you with a wholly unamused look. Not for the first time, you’re quite impressed by how expressive he manages to be with only one good eye. “I recognise that you have given me advice on the issue, Dr Foster, but given that it’s some stupid-ass advice, I’ve elected to ignore it,” he says curtly.

You sigh inwardly, but school your face to remain a mask of calm. Two more minutes, you tell yourself, Just get through that and the weekend will be yours.

“Well, Nick, you won’t know it until you try it,” you say, as gently as possible so as to not aggravate him further. “Give meditation a go. I can recommend some teachers or sites, if you’d like, and we’ll discuss this issue further in our session next week, alright?”.

He grunts. It’s the closest you’re going to get to a yes, at this point, so you decide to not push any anymore.

“Is there anything else you’d like to ask or mention before we end?” you ask, rounding yet another session off in the way you always do.

Nick shakes his head. “Nah,” he drawls, already moving to get out of his chair.

“Okay then, I look forward to seeing you next week,”. You force your facial muscles to contort into a smile, despite the fact that it’s the last thing you can be bothered to do.

“You have a good weekend, doc,” he calls, as he saunters to the door, hands shoved deep into his pockets. “You sure look like you could use one,”.

You laugh wearily as he leaves the room. “I’ll take your advice, Mr Fury,”.

It’s blissful to finally be done with your consultations and sessions for the day. You take a moment to stretch out in your armchair, breathing a sigh of relief at the fact that you’ve made it through yet another gruelling week. You love your job, you really do; the trials are more than made up for when you see your patients making progress. But sometimes…

Sometimes you think you could do with a therapy session yourself.

You gather up the papers and folders spread out on the glass table in front of you, then make your way to your mahogany desk. Like the rest of your office, you try to keep it as neat and visually calming as possible (better for the patients, that way), which means that most of your papers are kept out of sight, filed away in one of the many sets of drawers lining your room. The notes you’ve made from your consultations today you place in the top-most drawer of your desk, so that they can get scanned, then transferred into your digital records.

A sharp knock on your door interrupts your organisational groove. Your secretary, Maria Hill, steps inside, looking as crisp as ever in her well-cut navy business suit. “That’s all for the day, Dr Foster, is there anything else you’d like me to do?” she asks. In one hand, she carries a steaming mug of tea, which she sets down on the floral coaster you keep on your desk. You give her a flicker of a smile as a show of thanks.

“No, it’s quite alright, Maria, I’ve just got some scanning to do, which I can handle when I come in for Mr Barton’s consultation tomorrow morning. If you’ve sent off those prescription orders as I requested earlier, then you’re free to go,”.

Maria nods in that brief, businesslike way of hers, then turns sharply on her heel to stride out of the room. “Oh, by the way,” she says, stopping with her hand on the door handle, “That Everhart woman called again. I gave her the same spiel about confidentiality and all, but she’s having none of it. Said she’d drop you an email,”.

You groan, pressing your fingers to your temples at the mention of that name. “Right,” you mutter, “Thanks for letting me know, Maria. I’ll handle her. Have a good evening,”.

After she leaves your office, you boot up your laptop and take a few sips of your tea. You huff angrily when you scan through your inbox and see that yes indeed, you’ve received an email from Christine Everhart. You’re half tempted to throw your laptop across the room in frustration. Why won’t she leave you alone? With a weary sigh, you begin to read it through.

Dear Dr Foster,

I hope you’ve been receiving my previous messages. I’ve been attempting to make contact for several months now, wishing to get a statement from you concerning your time working with the Avengers. I was wondering when you’d be free to discuss this topic with me.

I am well aware that, due to confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, you are unable to talk about the information exchanged during your private sessions. This is not an issue. We — that is, myself and my superiors at WHiH World News — would simply like to get your side of the story, in terms of what it’s like living in a building filled with enhanced humans. In particular, we’d like to focus on your relationship with Sergeant James Barnes.

Your stomach does a sickening flip at the sight of his name. You read on, pushing past the feeing of nausea rising in your throat.

The interview itself would hardly take any time, and I am even happy to do it over the phone — though obviously, in-person would always be preferable. Should you require it, we would be able to negotiate a sum of money, in exchange for your cooperation.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Do let me know your preferred dates as soon as possible.

Kind regards,

Christine Everhart

You’re vision is tinged scarlet. When you look down at your hands, you find that your fingers are trembling with barely held-in rage. The audacity of that woman. How dare she think that she can just bribe you for information? What kind of person does she think you are? You’re fuming internally, and you half-expect there to be steam coming out of your ears. What kind of person must she be, to be willing to stoop so low in order to get what she wants. If she believes that she can just buy her way into your good books, you want absolutely nothing to do with her.

Besides, you’re not fooled by her words in the slightest. You’ve seen the articles she’s written about the team — the piece on Steve following the incidents in DC had been particularly cruel.

The more times your eyes skim over the email, the more infuriated you become and the more intensely the anger-fuelled fire burns inside you. You scoff at her choice of words; “when” you’d be free. You briefly wonder why on earth that woman thinks that you — a renowned psychiatrist — would have a spare minute in the day to talk to her, let alone actually want to do so. She’s assuming that you’re already in agreement, and that is something you simply cannot stand for.

Your ringtone blares, startling you out of your rage-filled downward spiral. A glance at the caller ID lifts your spirits immediately. You accept the call and put your phone on speaker, setting it down on the table as you slouch into your chair.

“Hey kiddo,” you say.

“Y/N!” Jane singsongs cheerily, “My long lost sister!”.

“Hey Janie,” you chuckle softly, a smile already creeping over your features. “You found the theory of everything, yet?”

“Haha,” she says, “Real funny. Haven’t heard you say that one before,”. You can practically see the eye roll that goes along with that sentence. “I just wanted to call to check up on you,”.

“Really? Aren’t I the older sister? Shouldn’t I be checking up on you?” you say dryly.

“You are a pretty shit older sister,” she concedes. “Actually, I had a real purpose for calling you,”.

“Oh, boy,” you mutter.

“Darcy and I were planning to take a trip to Bali this summer, but it’d be kinda boring with just the two of us. So, I was wondering if you — and maybe Wanda and Pegs — would want to come along too?”

Your heart sinks, “Jane, I’d love to—,”.

“But you’ve got patients to see, I know, I know, I figured you’d say that,” she sighs.

“Sorry,” you mumble, feeling truly upset for having rejected her suggestion. You’ve been dying for a vacation, but your practice was just picking up, and you hated having to miss sessions with your patients. “Maybe for Christmas we can do something?” you suggest.

“Yeah, whatever,” Jane grumbles, clearly upset with you.

“Aw Janie, don’t be like that!”

“Y/N, you need to look after yourself too, y’know?” she tells you, “You’ve barely had any time to yourself after—well,”. Wisely, she cuts herself off before finishing that thought, not wanting to bring up such a touchy topic.

You sigh. “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course!” she exclaims.

You shift forward and bring your laptop closer to you. “So this reporter, Christine Everhart has been trying to get a statement out of me, ever since I stopped working for the Avengers—,”

“Everhart? Isn’t she that bitch from Vanity Fair?” she asks.

“That is she,” you affirm. “And bitch is an understatement. More like, cold-hearted snake,” you scoff. “Anyway, she just sent me this really, really pushy email, and it’s got me real pissed off,”. You read the aforementioned email out to Jane, who makes various sounds of outrage and discontent as she listens.

“Yeah, I guess cold-hearted bitch-snake is a good description,” she says, once you’re done.

You sigh heavily, suddenly feeling as if the weight of the world has come crashing down on your shoulders. “Sometimes, I wish I’d never said yes to Pepper that first time, you know?”.

“You don’t mean that,” Jane says softly.

“No, I guess I don’t,”.

A moment of silence passes, as Jane waits for you to elaborate. You think back to that time in your life, when things were still looking great for you.

After the thwarting of Project Insight, the massive SHIELD data dump and the revelation of the Winter Soldier’s identity, Pepper Potts had invited you to act as private psychiatrist to the team. She’d come to you under Sam’s recommendation, who — being a counsellor at the VA at the time — had heard your name mentioned in many circles, and passed this information on to her.

You were surprised when Pepper approached you, specifically, out of everyone else in your field. You were absolutely floored when you realised that she wasn’t just interviewing you for the job, but in fact, telling you that you’d already gotten it.

At the time, you were working with the US military, helping to rehabilitate returning soldiers who had suffered particularly horrendous experiences during their deployment overseas. You’d seen it all — from POWs who’d experienced extensive torture at the hands of their captors, to rape victims and soldiers struggling to cope with the loss of one body part or another. Pepper believed that your extensive experience working with individuals fresh out of war made you the ideal person for the position.

When you first took on the job, your primary focus was helping Steve through his PTSD. You’d talked to Sam, and discovered just how mulish the Cap really was. It had been a tiring uphill struggle, as the lack of care given to Steve after his awakening — especially with regards to overcoming his grief, survivor’s guilt and PTSD — made it all the more difficult for you to jump in and help.

Steve had already become accustomed to coping on his own, and thus rejected your support. Several times. He had never been given the opportunity to put himself first, made to return to combat before he’d even recovered from the horrors he saw during the 40’s. For the longest time, Steve had no one to bleed on and consequently, developed this misconstrued belief that he didn’tbleed. That took a while to shake off, but once you broke through his psychological shield — stronger than any amount of vibranium could ever be — the two of you became the best of friends.

You ended up having regular sessions with the rest of the team, as well. Pepper would forever be grateful to you for helping Tony overcome his mental troubles; she’d told you this herself.

Of course, when Bucky showed up out of the blue some months after your employment, it fell to you to help him find some semblance of normalcy. You’d studied HYDRA’s files on him extensively, searching for ways to break his triggers. Initially, he’d been reluctant to accept your help, much to Steve’s dismay. But, when Bucky realised how much less invasive your methods would be, he’d been game to give things a go. Helping him establish a healthy relationship with his metal arm had been particularly challenging. He’d never go back to the man he was before the war, but at least he could begin to find peace with the person HYDRA had forced him to be.

You prided yourself on maintaining professional decor at all times, but the environment at the compound was unlike anything you’d ever experienced. Things were so much more…intimate. You were in office hours nearly 24/7, available for a chat with anyone, at any time. You’d found the boundary separating your ‘work’ mode from your ‘personal’ mode becoming increasingly blurred as you started doing more things with Bucky as ‘friends’. Over the course of countless sessions spent together — some far less professional than others — you found yourself falling in love with him.

That would turn out to be the best thing to ever happen to you and the biggest regret of your life.

“Y/N? You still there? You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?” Jane teases, pulling you out of your contemplative stupor.

You laugh tiredly. “My only remorse about the whole thing is the fact that I let my emotions get the best of me, Jane. If I had somehow managed to…keep a hold of them better, I don’t think I’d be in this position, you know?”

“You can’t know that for certain, Y/N,” she chastises, “Don’t beat yourself up about it,”.

“I’m not! Well, I’m trying not to, at least,” you amend, “Don’t get me wrong, Janie, working with the Avengers was hands-down, the best experience of my life. I loved them. I love them, still. I just—I wish it hadn’t ended the way it did, y’know?”

“You love them still?” Jane repeats quietly, “Even Bucky?”

You gnaw at your bottom lip. “Yeah. Even him. Not—not the way I used to, obviously, but still,” you shrug, even though she’s not there to see it, “Something’s there,”.

Jane makes a noise of interest, like she’s about to comment on that, before groaning loudly. “Okay, Y/N. Listen, I gotta go, Darcy’s calling, but if you—if you need to talk to someone, I’m here for you, okay?”

“Bye Janie,” you murmur.

“Bye,”.

The office is almost hauntingly silent without Jane’s voice crackling out of the speakers. You shut down your laptop, finish off your tea and clean up the last few bits of paper littering your desk. Just as you’re about to leave, your phone dings with an incoming text. It’s from your boyfriend, Loki.

You wanna come over tonight? We can have dinner and chill.

You smile at the thought, knowing exactly what ‘chill’ means in his book.

Sure. Be there in 20.

You tuck your phone into your purse, and bustle about, locking things up. After that conversation with your sister, thoughts of Bucky are front and centre in your mind like they haven’t been for a while. Honestly, you thought that after half a year, you’d got over the worst of it. Apparently not. Try as hard as you might, you can’t turn off the trickle of images crossing your mind; some you look upon with fondness, others you push away in disgust.

That’s enough of that now, you scold yourself mentally, as you step out onto the streets. You have a new boyfriend now, someone that shares your interests and cares for you. No matter how special things might have been between you and Bucky, and despite what you might have thought at the time, it’s pretty clear that whatever you had together wasn’t irreplaceable.

---------------------------- Tags are open, but I’m only accepting requests via asks or PMs. Tag requests from replies/comments will be ignored.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #loki x reader #bucky barnes angst #bucky barnes fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #my writing #i know this game #pepper potts #pepper x reader

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smugwanderlust · 4 years

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Hello all, I hope everyone is having a splendid quarantine. Ha! What a ridiculous thing to say because I am sure no one is actually enjoying the quarantine, but if you are, good for you.

Like I mentioned in my last blog I am pretty stressed out over all of this and I know that I am not the only one. My husband is an assistant supervisor at a vitamin factory, Designs For Health, and due to high demand he is working way more then he should. Not to mention that half the employees had to leave temporaryly because they were deemed high risk, which results in my husband work 60-90 hour work weeks. Which of course translates to me parenting solo. That is my own personal stress and I know that a lot of people have it worse then me so I am not complaining. Simply, getting my thoughts out of my head.

I’ll be relived, as will most of the nation when this whole thing blows over and life can get back to normal.

Anyways, I am way off topic here. I wanted to talk to you guys about my acne problem and the solutions I have found that have helped me.

First let me just say that I had a slight acne problem in high school. I’d breakout here and there but never anything super serious. Which was very fortunate for me. I think it was because I didn’t wear makeup and I had pretty strict diet. It helped, I guess (depending on how you look at it), that my boyfriend at the time didn’t like it when I wore makeup and was not a fan of junk food. Looking back he was kind of an asshat but c’est la vie. He was a former quarter back of his high school and had big dreams of making it into the NFL, until a snowboarding accident tore that dream apart. Insert dramatic music, dum dum dum…

Anyways, because of his dreams he was always careful of what he ate and watched what I ate as well. Not that I ate much because I had a slight…ok maybe more then slight… eating disorder. I remember one time after school, my ex and I were hanging out and I grabbed some potato chips out of the pantry and he watched me eat them. I counted and 10 chips in he said that was more then enough taking the bag away from me and putting it back into the cupboard. I asked him if he thought I was eating to much and he said, and I’ll never forget this, that I was gaining a little weight but he didn’t like it when I ate junk because it made my face break out. I told him that I could cover it up with makeup and he said makeup was for girls who had something to hide. That if I took care of myself I wouldn’t need it.

Well, I was 115 lbs, and far from fat. It came across the wrong way but the point was a valid one. (Also I just want to say that he turned out to be a really great personal and pastors at a church now. My memories are of him 10 years ago.)

Really quick, let me embarrass myself by showcasing me in high school! What a laugh…

15 & Glamorous (My goth days…)

Back when too much eye-liner was the “cool” thing to do

16 & Sunburnt

17, friends, & the beaches of Mexico

17 & Rocking my first selfie…(yikes!)

Senior Prom

Class of 2009

16 & Sunburnt

Class of 2009

17 & Rocking my first selfie…(yikes!)

Senior Prom

17, friends, & the beaches of Mexico

Back when too much eye-liner was the “cool” thing to do

15 & Glamorous (My goth days…)

Senior Prom

Class of 2009

Senior Prom

17 & Rocking my first selfie…(yikes!)

16 & Sunburnt

Anyways…

When it comes to our skincare and our acne problems one of the first things you can do to help your skin is give it a break. A break from oily makeup and lotions. Also, give your body a break. Being healthy on the inside WILL reflect on the outside. This is coming from the queen of pizza and M&Ms, so believe me, I know how hard it is to switch out the bad for the good. It is my number one thing that I do though if I am experiencing a breakout, cut out the junk.

Like I said, I didn’t have too much trouble with acne in high school, but I had huge amounts of trouble with acne after I had my first child and my pre-thirties hit.

I am almost 30, let’s have a moment if silence…

Ok, moving swiftly on….

Let me show you some pictures of my skin last January.

Gross right?

I tried everything from witch hazel to 29 different skincare lines. Which was A LOT. I bought the high end items at Ulta Beauty, best sellers on Amazon, and almost everything Target had to offer. I also paid for expensive facials, but NOTHING, was working. It was crazy and very embarrassing. Not to mention terrible for my self-esteem.

Anyways, I needed to find something, anything, really that would make my skin look better.

I reached out to my cousin, who is a consultant for Arbonne. We tried a few products and for the first time in this get-this-acne-the-hell-off-my-face journey I had relief. Now I have a solid skincare routine and my face looks SO MUCH BETTER!

See for yourself:

The photo on the left, is screen grabbed from a video I did with my daughter, I didn’t even have enough self esteem to take a selfie last year. Sad right? Well the photo on the right is me one year later and all I am wearing in the second photo is mascara. The difference is evident. However I posted a few more fresh-out-of-the -shower pictures to further drive my my point home.

As you can see I still have few problem areas but overall… IT IS MUCH BETTER! Not bad looking for being a few months shy of the big THREE O (30 in case that was confusing.)

So, here is the deal, I am not an expert or some famed blogger trying to make the big bucks… Is that even a thing? hmmm…

At any rate, I am going to give you some solid tips that really helped me overcome my acne problem.

Acne Tips & Tricks:

Cut out dairy, gluten, soy, unhealthy fats and sugars. I know that this is a tough one, believe I KNOW. I could eat frozen pizza, Dr. Pepper, and M&Ms DAILY. I am a firm believer that if you are healthy on the inside it will reflect on the outside. I am sure there is a lot of science behind this but today I wanted to blog from the heart and not give out an overkill of information.

Use Tea Tree Oil: Tea tree oil can be a powerful weapon against acne. Several studies have shown that it helps reduce the severity of a breakout. You can make your own acne treatment by mixing one part tea tree oil with nine parts water and applying the mixture to affected areas with a cotton swab once or twice a day, as needed. This for sure works for me, if I of course, combine it with other helpful get-rid-of-acne tricks. Another way to go about this is adding a few drops to your moisturizer.

CHANGE YOUR PILLOWCASE! OK, I know that you don’t want to be yelled at for not changing your pillowcase – especially by some random blogger – but I swear on the bible (Forgive me Jesus) that this works. Think about all the nasty oils your body, hair, and face create throughout the day and at night? Then you sleep in that fifth night after night after night. Ew. just, EW y’all. I change my pillowcase / sheets at least once a week. Even if you shower at night – your sheets still collect the nasties! Especially if you’re doing the nasty (sorry grandma.) So change em!

Use a fresh washcloth daily. Ugh, I know, this only means MORE laundry… and trust me I get that. I mean I have a seven month old and a three year old… plus a spouse who rarely does chores. So I get it, I really do, but when a washrag sits out for awhile its collects bacteria and then you wash your face with it… at that point you are only spreading the bacteria all over your face. This is also true for dishtowels. Consider this: Nothing is ever completely germ-free, even a fresh towel that has just come from the dryer. Yikes! So naturally a used washcloth that is left to air out each day gives bacteria and other microbes more of a chance to grow and spread. Yummy… only not so much, right? Each time you use a cloth to wash your face, dead skin cells get caught in it, providing even more food for the bacteria that gather in the towel. Laundering your washcloth regularly may not kill every germ it contains, but it will lessen the overall amount of bacteria and decrease your chances of catching an illness [source: National Institutes of Health]. I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t poulute you with sources tonight but I had to on this one.

Take time to relax: Stress and anxiety are a big cause to my acne flair ups. I have learned to take time for me and relax when I am feeling overwhelmed. As hard as this may be sometimes. and believe me I get that too, but it is needed and will help you look/feel so much better. So do something for you, write, read, watch a movie, girls night out… whatever, just take the time relax and de-stress.

Clean your makeup utensils: I CANNOT stress the importance of this enough. Just as bacteria grows on washcloths, it can grow into your beauty items as well. For more information on this please read my blog, Makeup Brush 101.

Haircare: If you have oily or greasy hair and you wear it down a lot, or you have bangs and it rests on your forehead the oils will spread to your face. If your haircare routine is leaving your hair oily then it’s time to find something new. You don’t want those oils transferring to your face. When my acne flairs up I tend to wear my hair completely out of my face until it clears up.

Don’t pick your face OR pop those pimples: There is so much information on this topic that I am simply going to leave you a link, that you should check out, because it has some great advice. Very Well Health.

Stay hydrated: Like I was talking about earlier it is important to have a healthy gut and part of having a healthy gut is drinking ample amounts of water. Seems weird but I double my water intake every time I have a flare up because toxins flush out my system faster.

Have a good skincare routine: THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT! Why?

Our skin sheds itself daily

Beautiful skin is a lifelong process – If you want gorgeous skin 30 years from now, the choices you make today will make that happen.

PREVENTION IS EASIER AND CHEAPER – Taking good care of your skin health daily will save you money in the long run. Skin problems like deep wrinkles, hyperpigmentation, acne scarring, or other skin issues can be prevented with a daily skin care routine and can prevent costly trips to a dermatologist or plastic surgeon in the future.

When you look good you feel good.

Consistency is Key: Trying a new product once or twice and expecting to see dramatic results won’t happen, unfortunately. The best way to see results with your skin is to keep coming back time after time, day after day, and sticking with it. In the end, you’ll see far more results with a long term plan than you will with a week-long “miracle treatment.”

Skin is your largest organ so protect it!

In the end, everyone has different skin, different genes, and a different lifestyles so it is very important to find a skincare solution that works for you and sticking with it. I obviously have my routine down pat. I don’t want this to be some annoying sales pitch, because it is not. These tips can and will help you as long as you maintain good skincare habits along side them.

Now, if you are wanting help finding a good skincare solution, I would be more then willing to help but that is up to you.

Feel free to reach me at [email protected] or my Facebook page.

Love you all & thank you for reading!

Until next time.

Acne 101: How I solved my problem. Hello all, I hope everyone is having a splendid quarantine. Ha! What a ridiculous thing to say because I am sure no one is actually enjoying the quarantine, but if you are, good for you.

#acne #blogging #life #personal

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catherindonald · 4 years

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Harbinger of Spring Look-Alikes: Dead Nettle & Henbit

By Susan Belsinger

The first spring wildflowers, herbs, and weeds are popping out all over. Two that frequently appear together are both members of the mint family, Lamiaceae: dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) and henbit (Lamium amplexicaule). Since they often grow in a patch together, are about the same height, and both have bright green leaves and purplish-pink flowers that bloom at the same time, at first glance, they are often mistaken as the same plant. However, held side-by-side and inspected a bit closer, they are very different in appearance. Similarities also include how and where they grow. Their early spring blooms are some of the first food for honeybees, and the tubular shape of their flowers attract hummingbirds.

Both of these spring harbingers prefer sunny spots where the land or garden soil has been disturbed, along roadsides and in meadows and lawns, and will tolerate some shade. They are often found growing side-by-side and intertwined together in patches in moist, fertile soil. I’d say that they grow anywhere from 8-to 12-inches tall, sometimes being the same height in a group together, though occasionally the henbit stretches just a little bit taller than the dead nettle. The henbit is a bit rangier and will even sprawl along the ground, whereas dead nettle is upright.

Henbit (left) and dead nettle (right) have obvious differences when compared side by side.

Harvest unsprayed, tender spikes early in the season—both the leaves and flowers are edible— and be sure of the correct identification of the plants before you eat them (dead nettle has some look-alike plants before it flowers). Both plants are easy to identify once they bloom. I find that many of our weedy harbingers taste green and earthy; I get strong mineral flavors from nettles and henbit similar to chickweed. Although they are members of the mint family, there is no mint to their flavors. If the stems are tough, then I remove them; if tender, I often add them to my Wild Greens Salsa Verde recipe (see below) since it will be pounded or pureed.

Wild, edible greens are powerful, good food and offer a variety of flavors for free; they are nutritious and usually high in vitamins and minerals. In Europe, the gentle word “potherb” is given to wild greens that offer the knowledgeable forager herbs for the cooking pot. Both of these plants can be eaten raw in salads, sandwiches, wraps, and salsas, or cooked in soups and sauces, or combined in a mess o’ greens with other potherbs or green leaves like kale, spinach, chard, tat soi, etc. I prefer to combine them with other greens rather than eat them in quantity on their own.

Dead Nettle (Lamium purpureum)

Dead nettle

Sometimes called red nettle, purple nettle, and even purple archangel, it is thought that this is called dead nettle because its leaves resemble stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), though they do not have the stinging characteristic of Urtica. Spotted nettle (Lamium maculatum) is closely related, however its leaves have whitish spots or blotches.

The foliage of purple dead nettle is wrinkled and hirsute (hairy), and the edges of the heart-shaped leaves have rounded teeth. The leaves grow opposite one another on their noticeably square stems, mostly on the lower stem and at the top (leaving the center stem bare), where they overlap and give the appearance of being overcrowded. Foliage is a medium, bright green although depending upon growing conditions, the leaves clustered at the very top are often purplish-red in color. It is quite attractive against the dainty, single, tubular, lavender-pink flowers. Beginning foragers might want to wait to harvest when the plant is in flower—that way there is no mistaking it for another plant.

In doing research on the medicinal aspects of dead nettle, there are many actions listed: antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, astringent, diuretic, diaphoretic, purgative, and styptic. Since it has astringent and styptic qualities, the fresh leaves are recommended for external wounds or cuts. Tea from the leaves is purported to aid in digestion and is used as a mild laxative. It is also used for women’s issues for heavy menstrual flow and cramps. Caution: dead nettle should not be taken while pregnant or trying to become pregnant.

Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule)

This plant is often mistakenly called dead nettle (L. purpureum). I’ve read that henbit gets its name because chickens like it and seek it out, though I am not sure about that—the chickens that I know don’t pay it much attention—though they have lots of other plants and insects to forage. While dead nettle has petioled leaves (little leaf stems attaching the leaves to the central stem), henbit’s lower leaves grow on short stalks, and the mid-to upper, ruffled and scallop-edged leaves appear in a half-circle, clasped around the square stem.

Henbit

I love how Billy Joe Tatum perfectly describes the flowers of henbit in Billy Joe Tatum’s Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook: “The tiny flower buds look like beet-colored velvet beads, as small as a pinhead at first. As the buds open you see silken purplish flowers with long corollas, looking like Jack-in-the-pulpits in miniature.” Often upon close inspection, the tiny flowers are pale pinkish inside with deeper-colored spots; each flower turns into a four-seeded fruit.

Chickens in the dead nettle.

Henbit’s properties are somewhat similar to those of dead nettle and include: anti-rheumatic, diaphoretic, diuretic, febrifuge, laxative and stimulant. Henbit has been used to support good digestion, whether consumed raw or made into a tea, and has also been used to reduce a fever.

To prepare foraged greens:

To quickly capture the best flavor and nutrients, bring the greens to the kitchen as soon as they are harvested. Assemble a salad spinner or washing bowl, a cutting board, and the compost bucket. Run one gallon of water into the spinner or bowl. Add about 1/4 cup distilled white or apple cider vinegar to the water.

Methodically pull the tips or tender leaves from the stems. Pinch off leaves with yellow edges, or brown or black spots. Place the edible parts in the vinegar water as you work and submerge the mass in the water, plunging up and down several times to loosen foreign matter. Let the greens soak in the water for several minutes and the grit will fall to the bottom of the container. Lift them out and drain them. Discard the vinegar water and spin or pat the greens dry. Use fresh or cooked. If not using all of them, wrap them in a kitchen towel and store in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator for a few days.

Wild Greens Salsa Verde

(Makes about 2 1/2 cups)

This traditional green sauce goes well with any type of vegetable, whether it is grilled, steamed, oven-roasted, or crudités; it is also good with simply-prepared meat, chicken, fish, and pasta, or even tortilla chips. Vary the herbs that you have on hand or what is in season. When I can, I make this a wild green sauce by adding whatever I can forage: dead nettle, henbit, sorrel, chickweed, dandelion greens and/or flowers, purslane, lambs’ quarters, violet leaves, field cress, monarda, wild onions, or garlic. You can fill in with any seasonal greens from the garden if need be like parsley, fennel fronds, cilantro, arugula, spinach, etc. Sometimes, I add other ingredients—about 1 tablespoon of capers, a chopped boiled egg, or a handful of nuts, like pine nuts, walnuts, or pecans. The sauce can be made without the bread; it just helps to thicken it a bit.

1 1-inch slice country bread, crusts removed

3 large garlic cloves, slivered

About 1/2 cup olive oil

About 3 to 4 cups of mixed edible green leaves, picked over, washed and spun dry

1/4 cup minced sweet-tasting onion

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Soak the bread in a little water for 10 minutes, then squeeze most of the liquid from it. Add the bread and the garlic to the mortar or food processor and pound or pulse to coarsely chop.

Rough chop the greens. Add them a handful at a time, and pound them in a mortar and pestle or chop in a food processor. Use a little olive oil to loosen them.

Add the olive oil to the herbs as if making a mayonnaise, a few drops at a time, blending or pulsing to incorporate.

When most of the oil has been added, blend in the onion and vinegar. If you want to add capers, nuts, or a hardboiled egg, now is the time; pulse or pound to mix. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, and taste for seasoning. The sauce should be a little thinner than pesto—add a bit more oil, vinegar, or even a bit of water if need be.

Let the sauce stand at least 30 minutes before using—that way the flavors will develop and meld. Adjust the seasoning and serve at room temperature. The olive oil will not emulsify completely; a little will remain on top of the sauce. Store any leftover sauce in a tightly-covered glass container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Medicinal Disclaimer: It is the policy of The Herb Society of America, Inc. not to advise or recommend herbs for medicinal or health use. This information is intended for educational purposes only and should not be considered as a recommendation or an endorsement of any particular medical or health treatment. Please consult a health care provider before pursuing any herbal treatments.

Susan is a culinary herbalist, food writer, educator, and photographer whose work has been published in numerous publications. She has authored a number of award-winning books. Her latest book, The Culinary Herbal: Growing & Preserving 97 Flavorful Herbs, was co-authored with the late Dr. Arthur Tucker. Susan is passionate about herbs and her work, sharing the joy of gardening and cooking through teaching and writing, and inspiring others to get in touch with their senses of smell and taste.

Harbinger of Spring Look-Alikes: Dead Nettle & Henbit published first on https://marcuskeever.blogspot.com/

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24hourchampagnediet-blog1 · 5 years

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We're proof you can eat to beat illness: These five people transformed their health

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/were-proof-you-can-eat-to-beat-illness-these-five-people-transformed-their-health/

We're proof you can eat to beat illness: These five people transformed their health

Given a alternative, would you quite take a tablet or tweak your breakfast? Everyone knows balanced weight loss program types the idea of fine well being. However for a rising variety of individuals, what and the way they eat is doing greater than that — it’s serving to them fight power circumstances.

Utilizing meals as medication on this approach is the main focus of an excellent new collection, beginning subsequent week within the Every day Mail, by world-renowned knowledgeable Dr William Li, a Harvard biochemist and medical physician. He’ll define how one can eat to beat a wide range of complaints, from arthritis to bronchial asthma and despair to dementia.

That is a part of a month of life-changing guides within the Mail written by main consultants, which can take a look at how one can take management of your well being.

Left: Alison James, a theatre nurse who was recognized with hypertension and introduced it down by ditching processed meals. Proper: Lee Morgan, 40, has managed his epilepsy with the excessive fats/ low fats medical ketogenic weight loss program beneath strict supervision of a specialist dietitian

We launch this Saturday with a singular Good Well being for Life wellness journal devised by TV’s revered medical consultants Dr Chris van Tulleken and Dr Xand van Tulleken. It will present you easy tweaks you may make to your on a regular basis life to realize a brand new, more healthy you.

And for inspiration about simply what a distinction altering your weight loss program could make, learn how these 5 individuals beat their power circumstances just by altering their meals decisions.

THE HIGH-FAT ROUTE TO CONTROL EPILEPSY

Lee Morgan, 40, is a pupil and lives in Plymouth. He says:

I’ve been taking anti-epilepsy medicine each day since I used to be recognized, aged 16. I’ve tried many sorts however they by no means stopped my seizures fully, and would go away me with horrible side-effects, reminiscent of drowsiness.

Three years in the past the medicine I used to be prescribed had been making me really feel like a zombie — I labored in buyer companies on the time and will barely converse coherently on the cellphone.

Left: Liquorice root can assist gastritis – an irritation of the liner of the abdomen (file picture) Proper: Celery is assumed to ease arthritis

The Central American Bushmaster, a venomous pit viper snake, is assumed to assist with the menopause (proper) and the Valerian herb flower sprigs is a treatment for insomnia (left)

I wished to return off the medicine, so noticed my specialist, who urged I be weaned off one of many drugs (I continued to take two others) and check out a ketogenic weight loss program — a low-carbohydrate, high-fat programme which has been proven to enhance management of epilepsy.

I used to be sceptical however agreed to attempt it. From then on I’d have not more than 20g of carbohydrates a day — which I initially weighed out utilizing kitchen scales — and nearly all of my meals consumption got here from fat.

Extra veg and a probiotic drink tackled my rosacea

Graham Sullivan, 59, is an organization director, and lives together with his spouse Suzanne, close to Arundel, West Sussex. Graham has two grownup youngsters. He says:

After I look within the mirror now, my pores and skin appears to be like so clear that it’s exhausting to imagine it’s actually me.

For 30 years I’ve lived with the pores and skin situation rosacea. I’ve tried all types: different Chinese language cures, steroid lotions — I’ve spent hundreds on therapies however none helped. A few 12 months in the past I noticed dermatologist Dr Justine Hextall, who gave me a laser remedy to eliminate thread veins. However she additionally stated altering my weight loss program — slicing down on sugar and booze — and taking probiotics would assist.

I did have a candy tooth: I might get via a family-sized bag of Maltesers and half a packet of biscuits a day. This, she stated, was encouraging irritation and making the rosacea worse. I took probiotics and made positive my meals had been extra healthful — oily fish to assist with the irritation and extra veg for good intestine well being. My pores and skin is one of the best it’s been in a long time, and I not want remedy.

EXPERT COMMENT: Dr Hextall, a guide dermatologist on the Tarrant Road Clinic in Arundel, stated: ‘We know alcohol and spicy food can be triggers for rosacea — they encourage inflammation, which causes flushing. There have been some encouraging small studies involving probiotics and rosacea [one Italian study found a group of patients who took probiotics with their medication had more improvement of their symptoms than those taking medication alone]. It may change the type of bacteria flourishing in the gut, having a knock-on effect on inflammation. I usually recommend the probiotic Symprove, as well as a general improvement to diet.’

It was a reasonably drastic change as I’d beforehand eaten numerous bread, chips and pasta. However to my shock, I by no means felt hungry as a result of I used to be consuming extra fat, which stuffed me up.

My meals now encompass hen or oily fish reminiscent of salmon, with salad leaves or avocado.

Extremely, my critical seizures stopped nearly instantly — I’ve had no blackouts since I began the weight loss program three years in the past.

The drowsiness and different side-effects have gone, too, and this 12 months I diminished one in every of my anti-epileptic medicine down from six tablets a day to 2, beneath the supervision of a neurologist.

I’ve grow to be so serious about how diets can change your well being, that I’m now in my second 12 months of a level in dietetics. I’ve additionally misplaced 3st, dropping from 16st 7lb to 13st 7lb.

EXPERT COMMENT: ‘The keto diet is individually prescribed as an add-on therapy for those with uncontrolled epilepsy,’ says Sue Wooden, a specialist ketogenic dietitian with the charity Matthew’s Associates. ‘Roughly 50 per cent of sufferers on a supervised medical keto weight loss program obtain a 50 per cent discount in seizures.

‘It’s thought to boost mind reserves and stabilise mind electrical energy which, in flip, reduces susceptibility to seizures.’

Professor Helen Cross, an epilepsy specialist at Nice Ormond Road Hospital in London, says: ‘The aim is for patients to eventually come off the diet, and around 80 per cent manage to do this without their epilepsy worsening.’

CUT OUT SUGARS TO BEAT IBS

Savannah Humphreys, 25, is a yoga instructor who lives in Hale, Cheshire. She says:

Regardless of being slim, some days excessive bloating would make me look three months pregnant. I’d additionally get frequent constipation, and if I used to be careworn, I’d undergo cramps and diarrhoea.

The bloating made me self-conscious, so I’d solely put on dishevelled garments; and the discomfort made me moody. It wasn’t till final 12 months — after eight years of intestine issues — that I noticed a GP. I’d obtained into yoga and realised it wasn’t proper that my tummy felt so tight on a regular basis. The GP did some checks to rule out different circumstances and informed me I had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Left: Black tea is understood to assist diarrhoea whereas tangerine is assumed to stem IBS signs

He beneficial I attempt the low FODMAP weight loss program [FODMAP stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols], the place you chop out sure sugars and carbohydrates which can be damaged down by the intestine and fermented by micro organism that launch gasoline, which might trigger bloating and ache.

I consulted a dietitian privately. She stated individuals react in a different way to sugars in meals, so I’d must undertake a trial-and-error strategy to search out my drawback gadgets.

I reduce out numerous meals for 4 to 6 weeks, together with wheat, broccoli, onions, milk, honey and apples; it was fairly in depth. I’d have meat and fish with low FODMAP greens reminiscent of lettuce, peppers and aubergines, and was allowed exhausting cheese, however not mushy, creamy ones. After about 12 days I had a flat abdomen for the primary time in my life.

Savannah Humphreys, 25, is a yoga instructor who lives in Hale, Cheshire

After six weeks, the dietitian stated I ought to begin to reintroduce meals, one group at a time, to see what would set off my IBS.

I found I reacted badly to sugary fruits reminiscent of mangoes, watermelon and apples, in addition to honey, caffeinated drinks and inexperienced leafy greens. Wholegrain bread and pasta are OK so long as I don’t eat an excessive amount of.

I’ve caught to the weight loss program for the previous 12 months. Typically I’ll react to restaurant meals or stress, however for essentially the most half I’m symptom-free.

EXPERT COMMENT: Kirsten Jackson, a guide gastroenterology dietitian at The Meals Therapy Clinic in Manchester, says: ‘The low FODMAP weight loss program works for IBS — at the least ten high-quality trials involving a whole lot of sufferers have confirmed this. FODMAP meals journey to the big bowel, the place they’re damaged down by intestine micro organism and fermented. This produces gasoline, inflicting bloating and ache in individuals with delicate guts.

‘However understanding which FODMAP meals you might be delicate to is difficult, and the weight loss program is initially restrictive. An knowledgeable dietitian can assist you keep away from deficiencies and information you thru the reintroduction part.’

DITCH SALT TO CUT BLOOD PRESSURE

Alison James, 56, is an working theatre nurse, who lives with husband David, 60, a retired civil servant, and son Connor, 23, in Belfast. She says:

Two years in the past my weight hit 15st (I’m 5ft 5in, which made my physique mass index 35: ‘obese’) and my blood stress was shockingly excessive at 170/90 [a normal reading is 120/80].

My GP wished to prescribe ACE inhibitors, drugs that loosen up blood vessels to cut back blood stress. However I requested if I might attempt to get my blood stress down by altering my weight loss program and taking extra train. He agreed and stated I had three months to show it round or begin medicine.

I found the DASH (dietary strategy to stopping hypertension) weight loss program, the place you chop out salt and eat extra fruit and greens (which include potassium to decrease blood stress) and wholegrains (to assist weight reduction).

I switched from white to wholemeal bread and restricted myself to 2 slices a day. I began having fruit for breakfast and for snacks, salads at lunch and a great deal of greens with my night meal.

David additionally adopted the weight loss program to assist me. It was tough at first, however we quickly tailored and truly loved cooking collectively. I additionally began working.

Inside three months my blood stress was 130/72. Two years on I’ve misplaced nearly 4st and my blood stress is 117/70. I’m stunned at how straightforward it’s to reverse such a harmful situation.

EXPERT COMMENT: ‘The DASH diet is a low-salt diet, and one of the best ways to reduce your blood pressure, the leading cause of cardiovascular disease,’ says Graham MacGregor, a professor of cardiovascular medication and chairman of the charity Blood Strain UK. ‘Additionally it is excessive in fibre and potassium, and low in saturated fats and sugar — all

confirmed to decrease the danger of coronary heart illness, together with train and never smoking.’

EATING OFTEN TO BEAT MIGRAINES

Rachel Alderson, 50, is a dietary therapist and lives in Chiswick, West London, along with her daughter, Georgia, 12 weeks. She says:

For years, my migraines had been so horrendous that I used to be simply surviving, not dwelling. I had one three or 4 occasions per week, every lasting 24 hours or extra.

I’ve tried quite a few drugs together with triptans, which are supposed to cease an assault. They helped among the time, however gave me side-effects reminiscent of a dry mouth.

Rachel Alderson, 50, is a dietary therapist and lives in Chiswick, West London, along with her daughter, Georgia, 12 weeks

I used to be often waking between 3am and 5am with the beginning of a migraine. I went to the Nationwide Migraine Centre, a charity in London. They stated starvation was pre-empting the assaults. So I ought to eat a banana if I woke at 3am to cease my physique from considering it was ravenous. Doing that basically helped.

Since then I’ve been making different modifications to my weight loss program and I really feel I’ve lastly cracked it. For instance, consuming a variety of carbs tends to depart me susceptible to migraines, so I’ve switched to a extra protein-based weight loss program: I’ve porridge and nuts for breakfast, and lunch is now hen or egg salad as an alternative of a ham sandwich. Alcohol and caffeine may also set off assaults.

I’ve had solely two migraines in three months and their severity has diminished, so I’m taking much less medicine. The migraines not management me.

EXPERT COMMENT: ‘Irregular mealtimes, with big gaps between, are a common cause of migraines,’ says Dr Andrew Dowson, a specialist for the East Kent NHS Headache Service.

‘After consuming, the physique makes use of up glucose from the bloodstream for power. If that runs out, it turns to shops within the muscular tissues, then the liver and eventually it burns fats.

‘It’s thought that it’s the change between these power sources that may set off a migraine in some individuals, so preserving to common mealtimes that assist keep away from these switches could be helpful.

‘Alcohol is a standard set off. Some are delicate to the alcohol itself, be it wine or beer; for others, it’s the after-effects that alcohol causes — reminiscent of dehydration or decrease fluid ranges — that act because the set off.

‘Caffeine is one other wrongdoer, however that is extra advanced. Some discover a robust espresso can assist abort a migraine. However in the event you drink it too usually, it could possibly make assaults worse.’

Source link Keto Diet Drinks

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fuckyeahtattoogirls-blog1 · 5 years

Text

We're proof you can eat to beat illness: These five people transformed their health

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/were-proof-you-can-eat-to-beat-illness-these-five-people-transformed-their-health/

We're proof you can eat to beat illness: These five people transformed their health

That is a part of a month of life-changing guides within the Mail written by main consultants, which can take a look at how one can take management of your well being.

And for inspiration about simply what a distinction altering your weight loss program could make, learn how these 5 individuals beat their power circumstances just by altering their meals decisions.

THE HIGH-FAT ROUTE TO CONTROL EPILEPSY

Lee Morgan, 40, is a pupil and lives in Plymouth. He says:

Left: Liquorice root can assist gastritis – an irritation of the liner of the abdomen (file picture) Proper: Celery is assumed to ease arthritis

The Central American Bushmaster, a venomous pit viper snake, is assumed to assist with the menopause (proper) and the Valerian herb flower sprigs is a treatment for insomnia (left)

Extra veg and a probiotic drink tackled my rosacea

Graham Sullivan, 59, is an organization director, and lives together with his spouse Suzanne, close to Arundel, West Sussex. Graham has two grownup youngsters. He says:

After I look within the mirror now, my pores and skin appears to be like so clear that it’s exhausting to imagine it’s actually me.

My meals now encompass hen or oily fish reminiscent of salmon, with salad leaves or avocado.

Extremely, my critical seizures stopped nearly instantly — I’ve had no blackouts since I began the weight loss program three years in the past.

‘It’s thought to boost mind reserves and stabilise mind electrical energy which, in flip, reduces susceptibility to seizures.’

CUT OUT SUGARS TO BEAT IBS

Savannah Humphreys, 25, is a yoga instructor who lives in Hale, Cheshire. She says:

Left: Black tea is understood to assist diarrhoea whereas tangerine is assumed to stem IBS signs

I consulted a dietitian privately. She stated individuals react in a different way to sugars in meals, so I’d must undertake a trial-and-error strategy to search out my drawback gadgets.

Savannah Humphreys, 25, is a yoga instructor who lives in Hale, Cheshire

After six weeks, the dietitian stated I ought to begin to reintroduce meals, one group at a time, to see what would set off my IBS.

I’ve caught to the weight loss program for the previous 12 months. Typically I’ll react to restaurant meals or stress, however for essentially the most half I’m symptom-free.

DITCH SALT TO CUT BLOOD PRESSURE

Alison James, 56, is an working theatre nurse, who lives with husband David, 60, a retired civil servant, and son Connor, 23, in Belfast. She says:

Two years in the past my weight hit 15st (I’m 5ft 5in, which made my physique mass index 35: ‘obese’) and my blood stress was shockingly excessive at 170/90 [a normal reading is 120/80].

I switched from white to wholemeal bread and restricted myself to 2 slices a day. I began having fruit for breakfast and for snacks, salads at lunch and a great deal of greens with my night meal.

David additionally adopted the weight loss program to assist me. It was tough at first, however we quickly tailored and truly loved cooking collectively. I additionally began working.

confirmed to decrease the danger of coronary heart illness, together with train and never smoking.’

EATING OFTEN TO BEAT MIGRAINES

Rachel Alderson, 50, is a dietary therapist and lives in Chiswick, West London, along with her daughter, Georgia, 12 weeks. She says:

For years, my migraines had been so horrendous that I used to be simply surviving, not dwelling. I had one three or 4 occasions per week, every lasting 24 hours or extra.

I’ve tried quite a few drugs together with triptans, which are supposed to cease an assault. They helped among the time, however gave me side-effects reminiscent of a dry mouth.

Rachel Alderson, 50, is a dietary therapist and lives in Chiswick, West London, along with her daughter, Georgia, 12 weeks

I’ve had solely two migraines in three months and their severity has diminished, so I’m taking much less medicine. The migraines not management me.

EXPERT COMMENT: ‘Irregular mealtimes, with big gaps between, are a common cause of migraines,’ says Dr Andrew Dowson, a specialist for the East Kent NHS Headache Service.

‘After consuming, the physique makes use of up glucose from the bloodstream for power. If that runs out, it turns to shops within the muscular tissues, then the liver and eventually it burns fats.

Source link Keto Diet Drinks

0 notes

jeroldlockettus · 6 years

Text

America’s Hidden Duopoly (Ep. 356)

In the most recent two-year election cycle, the political industry generated roughly $16 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, customer satisfaction — that is, from voters — is at a historic low. (Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty)

We all know our political system is “broken” — but what if that’s not true? Some say the Republicans and Democrats constitute a wildly successful industry that has colluded to kill off competition, stifle reform, and drive the country apart. So what are you going to do about it?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode; for more information on the people and ideas included, see the links at the bottom of this post.

* * *

We’d like to tell you about a new spinoff project from our friend Jad Abumrad, who hosts RadioLab. If you’ve heard Radiolab, you know Jad has an interest in powerful stories and sonic adventures. So you might want to check out his new podcast; it’s called UnErased. It’s about conversion therapy, a treatment that’s billed as a way of turning gay people straight. You may know it as the “pray away the gay” treatment. It’s been tried on more than 700,000 people. Jad speaks with historians, psychologists and theologians about the roots of the practice, what it entails, and why it continues to attract proponents even though the research literature suggests it is not efficacious. Whether it’s desirable, of course, is a separate matter. The first episode features Garrard Conley, who was sent for conversion therapy when he was 19; he wrote a memoir about that experience, called Boy Erased. So please check out the new UnErased podcast, from Jad Abumrad, wherever you get your podcasts.

A quick note about our previous episode, No. 355, which was called “Where Does Creativity Come From?” In a section about the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, we noted that Weiwei had been kidnapped and jailed in 2011 by the Chinese government. We also noted that he’d been “charged with subversion of state power.” But in fact, he wasn’t officially charged, with any crime. Which meant his imprisonment was even more punishing, as he was detained without access to lawyers or family. We regret the error. Since it was pointed out to us shortly after we released the episode, we were able to correct the error and republish the episode immediately, so there’s a good chance you never saw or heard the error. But if you did, we wanted to let you know.

* * *

Imagine a gigantic industry that’s being dominated by just one or two companies. Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Google has more than 90 percent of the global search-engine market. So, not quite a monopoly, but pretty close. Such cases are rare; but not so rare is the duopoly: when two firms dominate an industry. Like Intel and AMD in computer processors. Boeing and Airbus in jet airliners. The Sharks and the Jets, in the fictional-gangs-from-the-50’s industry. But surely the most famous duopoly is this one:

OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: “There’s nothing like a Coca-Cola, nothing like a Coke”

OLD PEPSI COMMERCIAL: People who think young say, “Pepsi please.”

The rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola goes back to the 19th century. Coke was long dominant, but in the 1970s and 80s, Pepsi gained ground and marketed hard to younger consumers:

Michael JACKSON (to tune of “Billie Jean”): You’re the Pepsi generation. Guzzle down and taste the thrill of the day. And feel the Pepsi way.

Coke’s internal research found that most people — even Coke employees — preferred Pepsi. In 1985, they abandoned their classic recipe in favor of “New Coke,” which tasted more like Pepsi. This didn’t work out so well.

OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: I’m Don Keough, president of the Coca-Cola company. When we brought you the new taste of Coke, we knew that millions would prefer it. And millions do. What we didn’t know was how many thousands of you would phone and write asking us to bring back the classic taste of original Coca-Cola.

Coke eventually got rid of New Coke altogether. And despite the flip-flop — or maybe because of it, and the attendant free media? In any case, Coke regained the top spot. Today, even as soda consumption falls, the rivalry rages on, with both companies adding juices, teas, and waters to their portfolios. You can afford to make those big acquisitions when you’ve got a ton of cash on hand, when you’re one of just two companies sharing a huge market. And there’s another advantage to being half of a duopoly: self-perpetuation. This was covered pretty extensively in the media during the so-called “cola wars.”

DOCUMENTARY: The “war” is good for both of them.

DOCUMENTARY: I believe that Coke and Pepsi together in this Cola War they’ve been in for decades now, actually help each other sell an awful lot of product.

There are plenty of reasons why duopolies exist, and they’re not necessarily all sinister. In capitalism, scale is really important: there are all sorts of advantages to being big, which leads big companies to get even bigger, gobbling up smaller companies and essentially dictating the rules of their market. Not everyone likes this trend. In many quarters, there’s a strong appetite for a smaller scale, for mom-and-pop and indie and artisanal. But let’s be honest: that smaller-scale idea is cute, but it’s not winning. What’s winning is dominance. Entire industries dominated by just a couple of behemoths. We’ve already given you a few examples from a variety of industries, but there’s another duopoly, a mighty one, that you probably don’t even think about as an industry. Which duopoly am I talking about? I’ll give you some clues. Let’s go back over what we just discussed about duopolies. They’re big institutions that take advantage of their size to get even bigger:

PBS: I’m talking to consultants on both sides, many of whom have been doing this for a long time, and they’ve never seen this amount of money.

As we said, not everyone likes this trend, but the opposition is not winning:

MAN: I’d like to see more competition. Competition makes a better product.

And this leaves an entire industry run by just two behemoths:

Chelsea CLINTON: Ladies and gentlemen, my mother, my hero, and our next President …

Ivanka TRUMP: I could not be more proud tonight to present to you and to all of America, my father and our next president …

CLINTON: Hillary Clinton.

TRUMP: Donald J. Trump.

Does it surprise you to hear our political system characterized as an industry? It surprised this guy:

Michael PORTER: Absolutely never thought of it in those terms.

And that’s Michael Porter, the world-famous business strategist.

PORTER: And at the core of it is what we call the duopoly.

Comparing our political system to something like Coke and Pepsi — that can’t be right, can it? No, Porter says: it’s worse than that. Coke and Pepsi don’t control their market nearly as fully as the Republicans and Democrats do.

PORTER: So you see even in soft drinks, we have a lot of new competitors. Even though Coke and Pepsi are so big, they don’t truly dominate.

Indeed, Coke and Pepsi only control about 70 percent of the soft-drink market. At least they’ve got the Dr. Pepper-Snapple alliance to worry about. Whereas, Republicans and Democrats? You can take all the Libertarians and independents, the Green Party, Working Families Party, the American Delta Party and the United States Pirate Party — which is a real thing — you add them all together, and they’re not even close to Dr. Pepper. For decades, we’ve been hearing from both sides of the aisle that Washington is “broken.”

Barack OBAMA: Washington is broken

Donald TRUMP: Our country is in serious, serious problem.

John MCCAIN: This system is broken.

Elizabeth WARREN: It’s not working. Washington is not working.

Joe BIDEN: Washington right now is broken.

Rob WITTMAN: Mr. Speaker, Washington is broken!

But what if the Washington-is-broken idea is just a line?

OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: I’d like to teach the world to sing …

Maybe even a slogan that the industry approves?

OLD COKE COMMERCIAL: … in perfect harmony …

Yeah, what if they’re just selling and we’re buying? What if it’s not broken at all?

Katherine GEHL: The core idea here is that Washington isn’t broken. In fact, it turns out that Washington is doing exactly what it’s designed to do.

And — oh yeah, it’s election season in America: don’t forget to vote!

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a dairy-products company in Wisconsin called Gehl Foods.

GEHL: My name is Katherine Gehl.

Katherine Gehl was the C.E.O. of the company. It had been founded well over a century earlier by her great-grandfather. For years, Gehl Foods sold the standard dairy items: butter, milk, ice cream. In the 1960s, they got into pudding and cheese sauces. And more recently, Gehl Foods kept keeping up with the times.

GEHL: High-tech food manufacturing.

Meaning: low-acid aseptic processing and packaging, using robots. Which creates shelf-stable foods without the use of preservatives. The process is also useful for products like weight-loss shakes and iced-coffee drinks. Under Katherine Gehl, Gehl Foods had more than 300 employees and was doing nearly $250 million a year in sales. But: there were a lot of challenges. Why? Because the food industry is incredibly competitive. There are new competitors all the time; also, new technologies and new consumer preferences. So, to plot a path forward, Gehl turned to one of the most acclaimed consultants in the world.

PORTER: I’m Michael Porter, I’m a professor at Harvard Business School and I work most of the time on strategy and competitiveness.

Porter’s in his early 70’s. As an undergrad, he studied aerospace and mechanical engineering, then he got an M.B.A. and a Ph.D. in business economics. So he understands both systems and how things are made within those systems. He’s written landmark books called Competitive Strategy and On Competition; he’s cited more than any other scholar in the field. He’s best-known for creating a popular framework for analyzing the competitiveness of different industries.

PORTER: The framework that I introduced many years ago sort of says that there’s these five forces.

These five forces help determine just how competitive a given industry is. The five forces are: the threat of new entrants; the threat of substitute products or services; the bargaining power of suppliers; the bargaining power of buyers; and rivalry among existing competitors. We’re not there yet but if you want to jump ahead and consider how these forces apply to our political system, I’m going to say them again: the threat of new entrants; the threat of substitute products or services; the bargaining power of suppliers; the bargaining power of buyers; and rivalry among existing competitors. You can see why someone like Katherine Gehl, the C.E.O. of a century-old food company, might want to bring in someone like Michael Porter to figure out what to do next.

GEHL: It was a classic business-strategy exercise.

Now, Gehl, in addition to her family business, had another abiding interest: politics.

GEHL: Yes, I’ve certainly moved around in the partisan classification.

During high school, she was a Republican. Over time, she drifted left.

GEHL: My daughter actually, when she was six, came to me and said, “Mommy, I think I’m a Depublican or maybe a Remocrat.” And I think that gives a good sense of where things are at in our household.

In 2007, Gehl joined the national finance committee of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She became one of his top fundraisers. A couple years after Obama was elected, Gehl joined the board of a government organization called the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which helps U.S. firms do business in emerging markets.

GEHL: And I was paying a lot of attention to what was happening in Washington D.C.

And Gehl did not like what she saw in Washington, D.C. She didn’t like it one bit.

GEHL: It became really clear to me that this fight was not about solving problems for the American people — this fight was about one party beating the other party, and that the parties were more committed to that than to actually solving problems or creating opportunities. Eventually, I understood that it didn’t matter who we elected. It didn’t matter the quality of the candidates. Once it became clear to me that it was a systems problem, I switched from investing my time in searching for the next great candidate and turned an eye to the fundamental root cause structures in the political system that pretty much guarantee that as voters we are perpetually dissatisfied.

So she started raising money for non-partisan organizations working toward political reform.

GEHL: And one of the things that became clear is that there was no thesis for investment in political reform and innovation.

In other words, people didn’t want to give money to non-partisan organizations working toward political reform. They only wanted to give money to political parties and their candidates. In fact, Katherine Gehl found that potential donors had a hard time believing that such a thing as non-partisan political reform even existed. That’s how conditioned they were to seeing the political system through a two-party lens. It was around this time that Katherine Gehl began meeting with Michael Porter. She’d brought him in to Gehl Food to help figure out the company’s strategy going forward, keeping in mind his five famous forces about industry competitiveness: new rivals, existing rivalries, substitute products, supplier power, and customer power.

GEHL: And while we were on that strategy, I would consistently make the case to Michael that, “Wow, how we’re analyzing this industry of low-asset, aseptic food production — which is the business I was in — all of these tools are directly applicable to analyzing the business of politics.”

PORTER: And frankly I knew almost nothing about politics. But the more I heard and the more we talked, the more it became clear that we really needed to take a fresh look here.

GEHL: It was out of that crucible of analyzing a traditional business strategy, and at the same time, devoting so much time to political reform and innovation, that it became clear that politics was an industry, the industry was thriving, and that all of the tools of conventional business analysis were applicable here.

PORTER: And that’s where looking at this as an industry starts to provide some power.

DUBNER: So you came to the conclusion that politics is an industry, much like many of the other industries that you’ve been studying over your career. You really never thought of it in those terms before?

PORTER: Absolutely never thought of it in those terms. We always thought of politics as a public institution. That the rules were somehow codified in the rule of law and in our Constitution. But what we came to see is that politics is really about competition between largely private actors. And these actors are — at the core of it is what we call the duopoly.

GEHL: The duopoly: Republicans and Democrats.

PORTER: And that competition has been sort of structured around a set of practices and rules, and in some cases, policies, that have been created over time, largely by the actors themselves. Actually the founders left a lot of room in terms of how the actual plumbing would work. But it was interesting — multiple of our founders actually expressed a deep fear that parties would take over.

GEHL: In fact, John Adams said at one point, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and concerting measures in opposition to each other.” And if you take a look at George Washington’s farewell address, which he wrote in 1796, he talks about dangers, which could come in front of the Republic in the future. And he specifically focuses on two. One is foreign influence, and the other is partisanship. The other danger is the formation of strong parties.

Having come to the conclusion that the political system operated more like a traditional industry than a public institution, Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter set down their ideas in a Harvard Business School report. It’s called “Why Competition in the Politics Industry Is Failing America.” When you read the paper, right there under “Key Findings,” is this sentence, in bright red print: “The political system isn’t broken. It’s doing what it is designed to do.” In other words, it was no coincidence that politics had become self-sustaining, self-dealing, and self-centered. They were the blue team and the red team — kind of like Pepsi and Coke.

GEHL: Essentially they divided up an entire industry into two sides.

PORTER: And we ended up seeing that it wasn’t just the parties competing. It’s that they had created influence, and in a sense captured the other actors in the industry.

GEHL: So you have media and political consultants, and lobbyists, and candidates, and policies, all divided onto one of two sides.

PORTER: What you see is, the system has been optimized over time.

GEHL: For the benefit of private gain-seeking organizations, our two political parties and their industry allies: what we together call the political-industrial complex.

PORTER: And this industry has made it very, very hard to play at all if you’re not playing their game.

DUBNER: How does the political industry compare in size and scope — dollars, employees, direct and indirect, penetration and influence, let’s say, to other industries that you’ve studied? Pharmaceutical industry, auto industry, and so on.

PORTER: Well, it’s a great question and we have done enormous amounts of work on it. It turns out to be very difficult to get what I would call a completely definitive and comprehensive answer. We estimate that in the most recent two-year election cycle, the industry’s total revenue was approximately $16 billion. This is not the biggest industry in the economy, but it’s substantial.

It’d be one thing if this large industry were delivering value to its customers — which is supposed to be us, the citizenry. But Gehl and Porter argue the political industry is much better at generating revenue for itself and creating jobs for itself while treating its customers with something close to disdain. Kind of like the cable TV industry on steroids. And the numbers back up their argument. Customer dissatisfaction with the political industry is at historic lows. Fewer than a quarter of Americans currently say they trust the federal government. In terms of popularity, it ranks below every private industry. That includes the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, the airline industry — and, yes, cable TV.

GEHL: Generally, in industries where customers are not happy and yet the players in the industry are doing well, you’ll see a new entrant. You’ll see a new company come into business to serve those customers.

A new company like … Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime or Sling TV or — well, you get the point.

PORTER: So in today’s world, we have the majority of voters say in polls that they would rather have an independent. So in a normal industry, you’d have a whole new competitor coming up that was about independents to serve that unmet need.

GEHL: And yet in politics, we don’t see any new entrants, other than Democrats and Republicans. So why is that? Well, it turns out that our political parties work well together in one particular area, and that is actually colluding together, over time, behind the scenes, to create rules and practices that essentially erect barriers to entry, ways to keep out new competition.

In their report, Gehl and Porter identify the “five key inputs to modern political competition: candidates, campaign talent, voter data, idea suppliers, and lobbyists.” Here’s what they write: “Increasingly, most everything required to run a modern campaign and govern is tied to or heavily influenced by one party or the other, including think tanks, voter data, and talent.”

PORTER: So essentially what’s happened is, the parties have now sort of divided up the key inputs to political competition. And if you’re not a Republican or a Democrat, then you’re in trouble in even finding a campaign manager, much less getting the best up-to-date voter data and the best analytics and so forth.

It’s not enough to monopolize the campaign machinery. Gehl and Porter argue that the political industry has essentially co-opted the media, which spreads their messages for free.

Sean HANNITY: This helps Donald Trump tonight. This is a big, big beginning to the end of what has been a witch hunt.

Chris MATTHEWS: Trump Watch: The man in the White House is behaving now like a character from on that old detective show Columbo.

Perhaps most important, the two parties rig the election system against would-be disrupters. The rules they set allow for partisan primaries, gerrymandered congressional districts, and winner-take-all elections.

GEHL: So each side of the duopoly — Republicans and Democrats — and the players that are playing for those teams, effectively, have over time worked to improve their own side’s fortunes. But collectively, they also have come together to improve the ability of the industry as a whole to protect itself from new competition, from third parties that could threaten either of the two sides of the duopoly.

PORTER: In this industry — because it’s a duopoly that’s protected by these huge barriers to entry — essentially what the parties have done is they’ve been very, very clever. They don’t compete head-to-head for the same voters. They’re not competing for the middle.

GEHL: It’s likely that we have a much more powerful center, a much more powerful group of moderates, than our current duopoly demonstrates.

PORTER: What they’ve understood is, competing for the middle is a sort of destructive competition. It’s kind of a zero-sum competition. So the parties have divided the voters and kind of, sort of, ignored the ones in the middle. Because they don’t have to worry about them, because if the middle voter is unhappy, which most middle voters are today in America, what can they do?

GEHL: The only thing either party has to do to thrive, to win the next election, is to convince the public that they are just this much less hated than the one other choice that the voter has when they go to the ballot. Which means that that gives those two companies, essentially — the Democrats and the Republicans — the incentive to prioritize other customers.

PORTER: And their target customer, on each side, is the special interests and the partisans. And they get a lot of resources, and a lot of campaign contributions, and massive amounts of lobbying money to try to get their support with whatever those partisan or special-interest needs are.

GEHL: There is now an entire industry of politics that moves forward, independent of whether that industry actually solves problems for the American people.

PORTER: So what’s happened is that the moat or the barriers to getting into this industry and providing a different type of competition have been built to enormous heights, which has allowed the parties to structure the nature of the rivalry among themselves in a way that really maximizes their benefit, to them, as institutions, but doesn’t actually serve the public interest.

Well, that’s depressing, isn’t it? Insightful, perhaps, but depressing nonetheless. So do Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter have any bright ideas for tackling the problem?

GEHL: Yes.

PORTER: Yes.

GEHL: Yes.

PORTER: Yes.

GEHL: Oh, yeah.

PORTER: Oh, my God.

* * *

The business strategist Michael Porter and the C.E.O.-turned-political reformist Katherine Gehl argue, in a Harvard Business School report, that our political system has been turned into an industry with no real competition. The industry’s primary beneficiaries are itself and its many ancillary participants, including the media.

PORTER: But the vast majority of Americans, who are somewhere in the middle, are feeling very, very disaffected.

The lack of vigorous competition, they argue, has allowed the Democrats and Republicans to carve out diametrically opposed political bases, fairly narrow and extremely partisan.

GEHL: So years ago, we created partisan primaries in order to actually take the selection of a candidate out of this “smoke-filled back room” and give the selection of the party candidate choice to citizens. So that was designed to give more control to citizens. It turns out it has had a very deleterious effect on competition, and has increased the power of the parties.

And the parties, Gehl and Porter argue, use those partisan bases to support the desires of the political industry’s true customers, and its wealthiest: special interests. Industries like healthcare, real estate, and financial services; also, labor unions and lobbyists. In this duopolistic business model, polarization is a feature, not a bug.

PORTER: We have a chart in our report that just selects some, what we call landmark-type legislation over the last 50, 60 years. And if you go back even 20 or 30 years ago, the landmark legislation was consensus.

For instance: the Social Security Act of 1935 had 90 percent Democratic support and 75 percent Republican. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had 60 percent Democratic support and, again, 75 percent Republican.

PORTER: Now, for the last decade or two, that’s been the opposite pattern. The only way landmark legislation gets passed is one party has enough votes to pass that by itself.

The Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, was passed in 2010 with zero Republican votes in Congress. President Trump’s 2018 tax-reform bill? Zero Democratic votes.

DUBNER: So your diagnosis suggests that this industry serves itself incredibly well. It suggests that it serves us, the citizenry, really poorly. And it also suggests that more competition would improve the industry, as it does in just about every industry. But, just having more competition in parties doesn’t seem to be the answer alone. I mean, there are plenty of multi-party political systems around the world that have similar cases of dysfunction and corruption and cronyism like ours. The U.K. comes to mind, Israel comes to mind. So how direct a step — or direct a prescription — would that be?

PORTER: Well I think in our system in particular, where we have only two, and they have been able, through the set of choices we’ve described, to actually set up the rules of competition that reinforce their partisan competition, dividing voters and so forth — more competition, I think, would be incredibly valuable. But it has to be a different kind of competition. It can’t be just another party that’s going to split our electorate into three partisan groups. In our work, we focus on what would it take to make the competition less about dividing the voters, and how can we make the competition more around building up more choices for voters that were more about solutions? By the way, let me be clear: we’re not against parties per se. What we are against is the nature of the competition that our existing dominant parties have created.

DUBNER: Let me ask you this: when you suggest that these rules were carefully constructed, I guess if I were thinking about something other than politics, the first thought that would come to mind then is, well, collusion, right? If I can be one member of a duopoly, I actually hate my rival much less than I hate the idea of anybody else who would interrupt that rivalry, because we are splitting the spoils now. Do you have any evidence of collusion between the parties to create a system that essentially keeps the rest out?

PORTER: Well first of all, that is the right word. It is collusion. And there’s probably a legal definition of collusion, which I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer. But the effect is exactly the same: the parties have agreed on a set of rules that benefit the duopoly and preserve this nature of competition. You can really put rules into a number of buckets. There’s legislative machinery, as we call it, which is how the Senate and the Congress are run. And then there are the election rules, having to do with what is the primary process like, and what does it take to get on the ballot as an independent. The various campaign finance stuff that surrounds elections.

DUBNER: Has anyone ever considered filing — whether in earnest or not — an antitrust suit against Republicans and Democrats?

PORTER: You know, Stephen, that’s a great question. I have. We’ve actually had a significant effort to see if that’s feasible. Look at what the law is, look at the antitrust statutes. But this is absolutely what antitrust policy is all about. It’s creating open, effective competition that serves the customer and the public interest. And this industry cries out for that.

DUBNER: So in the report, you discuss the many advantages the two parties have. And I think we all recognize that there’s real power in size and there’s leverage, especially when you’re making your own rules for your own industry. And you write that they use those advantages to retain control and to constrict competition and so on. But it strikes me that Donald Trump really got around a lot of those advantages. So you write that the parties “control the inputs to modern campaigning and governing.” But he didn’t rely on that, really. You wrote that “the parties co-opt channels for reaching voters.” But he kind of co-opted or maybe took advantage of his own channels, including free media and his own social media accounts. You write that the parties “erect high and rising barriers to new competition.” But in the case of Trump, his own party tried as hard as they could to erect the highest barrier and couldn’t keep him out.

On those fronts, it would strike me that the parties failed. They failed to constrict a certain competitor. So I don’t know how you personally feel about President Trump, but according to those advantages and his end run around them, it would sound as though he is at least one example of the solution to the problems that you’re describing.

PORTER: I think that is definitely a good question and we must take that on. I would say a couple of things. First of all, the best choice that President Trump made was to run in a party.

GEHL: He had to pick one side of the duopoly, because he knew he couldn’t win as an independent. And he had actually explored running as an independent in previous years, but that in the current system is not seen to be a winning strategy.

PORTER: The other thing I would say about him was that he had resources. In the end, he didn’t have to use that many of them. But in a sense, he could almost have self-financed, and he was appealing to a certain subset of the partisans. Maybe even a somewhat neglected subset of the people on the right. And he had a very strong existing brand identity. So he was able to get a lot of recognition and coverage without having to spend that much on advertising.

GEHL: He represents a personality-driven campaign within a party, but we don’t believe that he represents fundamentally transforming the structure of competition in the industry.

PORTER: But the real thing that I think everybody has to understand is that in modern politics, the parties are more powerful than the president. And Donald Trump has gotten very little done. He’s achieved no compromise. And his signature success got zero Democratic votes. And the game hasn’t changed. So far, Trump is just the third in a row President that may have said that he was going to do things differently and cut across lines and all that kind of stuff. But, frankly, he didn’t. Obama didn’t, and President Bush didn’t. Even though President Obama and President Bush campaigned on bipartisanship and bringing people together, they failed. So I think that those recent case studies are sobering.

We should note that some political scientists argue that Gehl and Porter’s analysis of party power has it backwards. These scholars say our political system is in bad shape because the parties have gotten weaker over time. They argue that stronger parties could help beat back special interests and produce more compromise and moderation. You want some interesting evidence for the parties-are-weak argument? Think back to the 2016 presidential election. You had one national party, the Democrats, that tried as hard as it could — to the point of cheating, essentially — to pre-select its candidate, Hillary Clinton, who then lost. And you had the other national party, the Republicans, try as hard as it could to keep a certain candidate off the ballot — but they failed, and he won.

GEHL: It’s true that the parties are not as strong as they were in the past. But both sides of the political-industrial complex, Democrats and Republicans, are as strong as ever. It’s just that the power may not all reside within the party.

PORTER: And if parties were stronger, that doesn’t mean they’d be moderating forces. That’s what some people say. I really don’t understand that argument. The stronger they are, the less moderating they’re going to be, given the nature of the competition that’s been created.

GEHL: And I think we are really asking for too little when we say, “Let’s tinker around the edges and get stronger parties so that we can have a little bit of a cleaner process.

PORTER: Instead, what we believe is, we need to create structural reforms that would actually better align the election process and the legislative process with the needs of the average citizen.

DUBNER: So you’ve diagnosed the problem in a really interesting and profound way, by overlaying a template that’s more commonly applied to firms, to the political industry. And of course it theoretically leads to a different set of solutions than we’ve typically been hearing. So then you discuss four major solutions. Let’s go through them point by point. Number one, you talk about restructuring the election process itself. Give me some really concrete examples of what that would look like. And I’d also love to hear whether you do see some evidence of these examples happening, because it does seem there has been some election reform in states and regions around the country.

PORTER: Yes, well when we think about reform, we have to think about really two questions. Number one, is a reform powerful? Will it actually change the competition? And a lot of what people are proposing now is actually not going to make much difference. So term limits are a great example.

GEHL: We aren’t fans of term limits, because we think that without changing the root-cause incentives, you’ll actually just have different faces playing the same game.

PORTER: So number one is, we have to reengineer the election processes, the election machinery.

GEHL: And there are three electoral reforms that are important, we call it the the election trifecta.

PORTER: And the first and probably the single most powerful is to move to non-partisan, single-ballot primaries.

GEHL: Currently, if you’re going to vote in the primary, you show up and you get a Democratic ballot or a Republican ballot. And then you vote for who’s going to represent that party in the general election.

PORTER: And the one that’s on the farthest left or the one that’s on the farthest right has a tendency to win. Because the people that turn out for primaries are a relatively small fraction of even the party. And those are the people that show up, because they’re really partisans and they really have special interests and they really care about getting somebody on the ballot that’s for them

GEHL: In a single-ballot, nonpartisan primary, all the candidates for any office, no matter what party they’re in, are on the same ballot. And we propose that the top four vote-getters advance out of that primary to the general election.

PORTER: And the reason a single primary where everybody’s in it is so important is that if you want to win, you want to appeal to as many voters as you can. Hopefully more people will vote in the primary. And therefore you’re going get people that are not just trying to appeal to their particular extreme.

The second part of the Gehl-Porter election-reform trifecta: ranked-choice voting.

GEHL: Here’s how ranked-choice voting works. You’ll now have four candidates that made it out of the top four primary. Those four candidates will all be listed on the general election ballot, and you come and vote for them in order of preference. So it’s easy. “This is my first choice.” “This candidate is my second choice.” “This is my third choice.” “This is my fourth choice.” When the votes are tabulated if no candidate has received over 50 percent, then whoever came in last is dropped, and votes for that candidate are then reallocated to those voters’ second choice, and the count is run again until one candidate reaches over 50 percent.

PORTER: And what that does is it gives a a candidate a need to appeal to a broader group of voters.

GEHL: And very importantly, it eliminates one of the hugest barriers to competition in the existing system — and that is the spoiler argument. So what happens currently is that if there’s, let’s say, an attractive third-party candidate, or an independent candidate, both Democrats and Republicans will make the argument that nobody should vote for them because they will simply draw votes away from a Democrat, or draw votes away from a Republican, and therefore spoil the election for one of the duopoly candidates. Once you have ranked-choice voting, everybody can pick whoever they want as their first choice, second choice, third choice. No vote is wasted and no vote spoils the election for another candidate.

PORTER: And then the last part of the trifecta is non-partisan redistricting. Gerrymandering has to go.

GEHL: Essentially, when parties control drawing the districts, they can draw districts that will be more likely to tilt in favor of their party. And they can end up having a disproportionate number of “safe” Republican seats or “safe” Democratic seats by the way that they draw the districts, and we want to make that go away.

In addition to election-rule reforms, Porter and Gehl would like to see changes to the rules around governing.

GEHL: Congress makes its own rules for how it functions, and over time, these rules, customs, and practices have been set in place to give an enormous amount of power to the party that controls the chamber.

PORTER: And right now, it’s the Republicans that are controlling it. But what’s happened — and this is sort of collusion in a way — is, when the other party takes over, they do it the same way, pretty much.

GEHL: So we propose moving away from partisan control of the day-to-day legislating in Congress. And also, of course, in state legislatures as well.

The third leg of their reform agenda is about money in politics. But their analysis led them to a different conclusion than many reformers’.

GEHL: Where we differ with so many people championing these reforms is that we don’t believe that money in politics is the core issue.

PORTER: Ultimately, the problem is really this nature of competition that leads to this partisanship. And that’s not a money issue per se, that’s a structural issue.

GEHL: If you take money out of politics without changing the rules of the game, you’ll simply make it cheaper for those using the existing system to get the self-interested results that they want without changing the incentives to actually deliver solutions for the American people. Having said that, we do believe that there are benefits to increasing the power of smaller donors. The reforms that we have suggested are primarily focused on increasing the power of smaller donors.

For instance: having the government itself match donations from small donors. We should note: most of the ideas Gehl and Porter are presenting here are not all that novel if you follow election reform even a little bit. Even we poked into a lot of them, a couple years ago, in an episode called “Ten Ideas to Make Politics Less Rotten.” I guess it’s one measure of how successful, and dominant, the political duopoly is that plenty of seemingly sensible people have plenty of seemingly sensible reform ideas that, for the most part, gain very little traction.

PORTER: It is definitely challenging. This is a ground game. We’re not going to be able to do this in a year or one election cycle because the resources that the current duopoly have to deploy, to play their game, are substantial.

DUBNER: Despite the rather depressing — or at least sobering — picture that you paint of the political industry, throughout the report, you express quite a bit of optimism. And I want to know why, or how? Because I don’t see the avenue for optimism.

PORTER: Well I do think we have a basic optimism. We have no sense that it will be easy to change the rules of this game, for a whole variety of reasons. But the good news is, we’ve had some progress. We’ve got some nonpartisan primary states now, including California. We’ve got ranked-choice voting in Maine. I think what seems to be building in America is a growing appetite and a growing recognition that this isn’t working for our country. And I think the younger generation — millennials — is particularly outraged and concerned and open to, all kinds of new ideas. But I think it’s going to take time.

GEHL: The most exciting strategy in this area that we champion is a strategy put forth by The Centrist Project — and full disclosure, I’m on the board of The Centrist Project, it’s now actually called Unite America — and this is the Senate Fulcrum Strategy. So here’s the idea. Let’s elect five centrist, problem-solving-oriented U.S. senators who, at that number, five, would likely deny either party an outright majority in the Senate, which would make those five senators the most powerful single coalition in Washington D.C.; able to serve as a bridge between the two parties, or to align with one party or the other depending on the issue, in order to move forward very difficult policy solutions, where previously there has not been the political will. So we don’t need to wait to change the actual rules of the game to deliver politicians to office who can act independently of the existing political-industrial complex.

So that’s an interesting idea, seemingly sensible and maybe even viable. But this whole conversation got me thinking: if our political system really operates like an industry, as Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter argue, maybe it should be treated like one! In most industries, good products and services are rewarded; weakness and incompetence are punished.

Katherine Gehl, coming from the cutthroat food industry, surely knows this first-hand. There’s constant pressure to modernize, to optimize, to fight off old rivals and new. Indeed, not long after she brought Michael Porter in to consult on the future of Gehl Foods, she decided to sell the company, to a private-equity firm in Chicago. Why? “I absolutely loved running that company,” she wrote to us later, “ … but life is short, and I had other things I was also passionate about. … I wanted the company to be in the best position to succeed, and so I focused on professionalizing the company and developing a long-term strategy that took into account a changing competitive landscape.”

And that got me thinking: maybe there’s some private-equity firm out there who’d like to modernize a certain political party or two? Any buyers out there? If you’re too shy to approach the Democrats or the Republicans directly, drop us a line — [email protected] — and we’ll get things moving.

* * *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky, with help from Zack Lapinski. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melathe, and Harry Huggins; we had help this week from Nellie Osborne, and special thanks to a Freakonomics Radio listener, Kyle Watson, for bringing the Porter-Gehl paper to our attention. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Katherine Gehl, former President and C.E.O. of Gehl Foods.

Michael Porter, professor at Harvard Business School.

RESOURCES

“Why Competition in the Politics Industry is Failing America,” Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, Harvard Business School (2017).

EXTRA

“Ten Ideas to Make Politics Less Rotten,” Freakonomics Radio (2016).

The post America’s Hidden Duopoly (Ep. 356) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/politics-industry/

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