This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This is a footnote to the blog I posted earlier this morning noting majority public support for a Covid vaccine mandate.

Of course, there is and will be opposition, some of it fierce.

But, from various news reports, this footnote to what I wrote:

“The Biden Administration plans to tell nursing homes to vaccinate their staff against Covid-19 or risk losing Medicare and Medicaid funding.”

That idea – linking the vaccine to federal payments to citizens – payments such as Medicaid, Medicare and others – has crossed some minds before.  Now, the good news – at least for me – is that the Biden Administration is making following up.