Dear Reader,

The poet Hart Crane (1899-1932), a favorite of mine, famous for intricate works like “The Bridge” and “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen” wrote a four-line poem that was never published in his short lifetime, titled “To Earth.” I reprint it here.

Shortly after the U.S. midterm elections last month, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of U.S. adults from November 7th - 13th to find out what voters would say about why they voted for one party's candidate over another. The interesting thing about this survey is that the question was completely open-ended.

The must-pass Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 (colloquially known as the "Farm Bill") is now subject to great controversy. Late Tuesday night, the House Rules Committee added a provision to the bill that would suspend the War Powers Act for the remainder of the 115th Congress with respect to Yemen.

San Diego, Calif.- In a story on The Hill, Rep. Scott Peters is considering running for San Diego mayor in 2020.

In an email exchange with Peters' office last week, a spokesperson wrote to IVN San Diego re: a mayoral run, "We are not currently working on a statement nor do we have any announcements yet, but I’ll be in touch when he makes a decision."

Among the many moments of President Bush’s life celebrated last week, I have a particular reason to focus on November 3, 1992, when President Bush delivered what to me were the most important words of his presidency: “The people have spoken, and we respect the majesty of the democratic system.”

The 2018 midterms ended up being the biggest year in political and election reform in half a century, yet these efforts to unrig the elections and political process got mostly overlooked by traditional and mainstream media outlets.

Reason's Matt Welch says it well:

Oftentimes as citizens we say things like “someone should really do something about X, Y, or Z,” or we wonder how some big achievement in history happened, almost as if it happened by magic.

But change does not happen magically. It happens when someone (or lots of people) take the initiative to “be the change they want to see in the world” and stand up. In most cases, it is just regular citizens caring enough to not take ‘no’ for an answer.

San Diego, Calif.- The San Diego County Registrar of Voters has finished counting votes from the November midterm election.

County Registrar Michael Vu's office announced voter turnout totaling 66.4 percent. It marked the highest the county has seen in a midterm election since 1982.

For some perspective, voters turned out at 81.5 percent during the 2016 November Presidential election.

Health care is one of the most exciting and essential civic topics of our time. And blockchain is one of the most consequential technologies coming of age right now. So it's not surprising that, together, they stand a considerable chance of doing a lot of good in a lot of new ways.

Since it can sometimes be challenging to tell fiction from reality, especially with so many buzzwords flying around, let's take a look at some of the practical ramifications of bringing blockchain into modern health care.