Today is the one-year anniversary of this blog. I set a target of posting at least once a week for a year, and here we are. A year. There was a flurry of posts at the beginning with the presidential election last fall, and now I've had another run in the past month about health care. This is Post 204.
The political world certainly isn't getting more calm. Just in the next 5 days, President Obama is giving two major speeches - one to schools on Tuesday about succeeding in school (noon Eastern and broadcast live on the internet) and one to Congress on Wednesday about health care. Congress has a whole lot more going on than just health care - it's budget season. The Supreme Court is potentially going to overturn corporate donation limits to political campaigns in the next few weeks. Our military is still spinning its wheels in the Middle East and who really knows what the heck is going on over there. The national debt is starting to reach levels of being imaginary, because numbers don't go that high. The list could go on for awhile ...
So now what, for this blog? My intention was to contribute to the public discourse by making politics and government more understandable to the average citizen. I hope I've done that, and not merely perpetuated the cacophany that is the 24-hour "news" cycle on the internet.
It takes quite a bit of work to keep up with, what with all the reading for any kind of verification and analysis, plus I edit posts multiple times before I release them. If this were some kind of money-making venture, that would make the work a bit more worth it. But it's not. (I wouldn't even know how to get something like that started.) I have a number of other writing projects that I'd like to spend some time on. And then there's, ya know, that whole stay-home mom thing ... my preschoolers are getting to a phase where they need more total attention instead of me simply being in the same room but doing something else. I'm not the world's greatest at managing my time.
Unless something really stirs my soul and must be written about (like health care, but I think I've beaten that to death for now), or unless I suddenly have hundreds of people reading (as evidenced by, let's say, subscribers to the blog on Google Reader - there are currently 22) and asking me to keep going ... I'm going to let this blog go for awhile.
It's been an interesting year. Thanks for joining me in this little adventure!
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
I'm about done with this discussion
A new status line is popping up all over Facebook that goes, with slight variations here and there, like this:
No one should die, go blind, or be crippled because they can't afford health care. No one should go broke because they get sick. No one should be unable to change jobs because of a "pre-existing condition." If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
So ponder with me the political insinuations of this line ... if you agree with this, you support the Democrats' proposal of government health care. Conversely, if you disagree with the Democrats' proposal of government health care, then obviously you don't care if people do go bankrupt or even die from a lack of affordable health care.
Give me a freaking break.
Of course I don't want people to die or go bankrupt from a lack of or expensive medical treatment, and I do want the ill to be able to see a doctor. What kind of despicable wretch do you take me for? The insinuation presented by this line is completely insulting. I don't appreciate it.
Nancy Pelosi's health care bill was not written by the finger of God on the wall of the temple. Opposing the bill and the concept of universal government health care does not, in fact, make me a bad person, or stupid, or backwards, or selfish. It means I have a difference of opinion. That's all.
I will continue to oppose the health care legislation on the grounds that:
1. I subscribe to the Thomas Jefferson ideological position that less government intervention as a general rule is better. If you want me to support government intervention in anything, you'd better have a darn good argument. The statements (the well-thought ones, not the hysterical "You're the devil incarnate!" crap) I've heard in favor of universal government health care have not been enough to overcome this basic ideological difference or to resolve any of my specific concerns with the legislation.
2. We already have government health care for the poor and elderly. Ever hear of Medicare and Medicaid? My ideology of limited government is not asking you to dismantle or defund these programs. But they should certainly be fixed as they are since they need a lot of work, before we attempt to reinvent the wheel by creating yet another government health care program for the poor and elderly. This is the basic definition of duplicative waste.
3. All of the complaints about insurance company red tape and bureaucrats are not going to be resolved by turning the medical system over to government red tape and bureaucrats. I've encountered too many government bureaucrats to believe for a second that the situation would be any better or even different.
4. I'm extremely suspicious of the backroom wheeling and dealing that the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and the American Medical Association have been part of with the White House and Congress. Until the result of those meetings is made public, I'm suspicious of a sell-out which will blow up the current bad situation into something substantially worse.
5. If I am nothing else politically, I am a budget hawk. This is the crux of the whole thing for me: How is this behemoth going to be paid for? The first step to getting out of debt is to stop digging, and the CBO continually estimates that universal government health care will put the country trillions more into debt. We can't handle the national debt we have now. We still haven't paid for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan - we're up to our eyeballs in hock to China for just that. The stimulus bill was all pretend money. Social Security and Medicare are already in dire straits for a lack of cash flow. Where's the money coming from for another entitlement program that ostensibly includes every single person in the country?
These are my opinions and my concerns based on my experience working in the shark pit of Capitol Hill. They are not talking points handed to me by an insurance company CEO.
Grassroots this, Durbin.
No one should die, go blind, or be crippled because they can't afford health care. No one should go broke because they get sick. No one should be unable to change jobs because of a "pre-existing condition." If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
So ponder with me the political insinuations of this line ... if you agree with this, you support the Democrats' proposal of government health care. Conversely, if you disagree with the Democrats' proposal of government health care, then obviously you don't care if people do go bankrupt or even die from a lack of affordable health care.
Give me a freaking break.
Of course I don't want people to die or go bankrupt from a lack of or expensive medical treatment, and I do want the ill to be able to see a doctor. What kind of despicable wretch do you take me for? The insinuation presented by this line is completely insulting. I don't appreciate it.
Nancy Pelosi's health care bill was not written by the finger of God on the wall of the temple. Opposing the bill and the concept of universal government health care does not, in fact, make me a bad person, or stupid, or backwards, or selfish. It means I have a difference of opinion. That's all.
I will continue to oppose the health care legislation on the grounds that:
1. I subscribe to the Thomas Jefferson ideological position that less government intervention as a general rule is better. If you want me to support government intervention in anything, you'd better have a darn good argument. The statements (the well-thought ones, not the hysterical "You're the devil incarnate!" crap) I've heard in favor of universal government health care have not been enough to overcome this basic ideological difference or to resolve any of my specific concerns with the legislation.
2. We already have government health care for the poor and elderly. Ever hear of Medicare and Medicaid? My ideology of limited government is not asking you to dismantle or defund these programs. But they should certainly be fixed as they are since they need a lot of work, before we attempt to reinvent the wheel by creating yet another government health care program for the poor and elderly. This is the basic definition of duplicative waste.
3. All of the complaints about insurance company red tape and bureaucrats are not going to be resolved by turning the medical system over to government red tape and bureaucrats. I've encountered too many government bureaucrats to believe for a second that the situation would be any better or even different.
4. I'm extremely suspicious of the backroom wheeling and dealing that the insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and the American Medical Association have been part of with the White House and Congress. Until the result of those meetings is made public, I'm suspicious of a sell-out which will blow up the current bad situation into something substantially worse.
5. If I am nothing else politically, I am a budget hawk. This is the crux of the whole thing for me: How is this behemoth going to be paid for? The first step to getting out of debt is to stop digging, and the CBO continually estimates that universal government health care will put the country trillions more into debt. We can't handle the national debt we have now. We still haven't paid for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan - we're up to our eyeballs in hock to China for just that. The stimulus bill was all pretend money. Social Security and Medicare are already in dire straits for a lack of cash flow. Where's the money coming from for another entitlement program that ostensibly includes every single person in the country?
These are my opinions and my concerns based on my experience working in the shark pit of Capitol Hill. They are not talking points handed to me by an insurance company CEO.
Grassroots this, Durbin.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
this is NOT ABOUT YOU!
There's a sequence in the Pixar movie "The Incredibles " where Bob and Helen are arguing about whether or not Dash should be allowed to go out for sports in the middle of their disagreement about Bob wanting to relive the glory days of being Mr. Incredible. Helen shouts at Bob, "This is NOT - ABOUT - YOU!" My 3-year-old has picked up this line and whenever she gets mad at me for something, she gets in my face and shouts, "This is NOT ABOUT YOU!" (She's not allowed to watch "The Incredibles " for awhile because of this.)
I'd really like to shout that at President Obama. This - governing and leading the United States - is NOT ABOUT YOU! But a number of things that have surfaced just in the past couple of days are certainly starting to look like Obama is the ME ME ME President. For example:
1. The "I pledge to be a servant of Barack Obama" video clip in my last post.
2. President Obama is scheduled next week (Tuesday the 8th) to do a televised address for students, and all K-12 schools are presumably expected to watch it. Lesson plans have been sent out in advance with activities including this:
Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable for their goals.
A second version is now out there with "help the president" removed and "achieve short-term and long-term education goals" in its place. That's all well and good, but why was "help the president" ever ever ever even considered in the first place? That's some audacity of hope there, Mr. Obama.
3. The National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and the White House Deputy Director for Public Engagement recently held a conference call with a number of members of the arts community (directors, producers, etc) "to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal."
Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the NEA as a federal agency is not allowed to participate in political activities - that's just flat out illegal. The NEA is about the arts. Why on earth would the NEA be getting into health care (that's for HHS), energy (DoE), the environment (EPA), security (the Pentagon) ... you get the idea ...
It's apparent that they know exactly what they're doing, and they know it's illegal, since their phone call was wrapped up thus: "What that looks like legally?…bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely…" Is this another move by Obama to get more ME ME ME glorification and attention? The fact that a pretty high muckety-muck from the White House staff (Deputy Director is no small fish) was one of the call leaders gives me a big fat Yes.
4. There are a few more things reviewed by a friend on his own blog - high school students in Massachusetts had Obama's "Dreams from my Father" on their required summer reading list, and someone "forgot" to spread the word that the students could read any memoir. And the Obama election logo is still everywhere. It's on one website's home page 40 - F-O-R-T-Y - times.
Hey, Mr. President: Governing the United States - helping our economy, creating a good job market, whatever results we have from attempts at fixing health care, defending our country and people against terrorism, figuring out how to get our soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan when they finish the job there, heck - figuring out what they're doing there in the first place, the education system, home foreclosures, student loans, the banking system, whatever -
I'd really like to shout that at President Obama. This - governing and leading the United States - is NOT ABOUT YOU! But a number of things that have surfaced just in the past couple of days are certainly starting to look like Obama is the ME ME ME President. For example:
1. The "I pledge to be a servant of Barack Obama" video clip in my last post.
2. President Obama is scheduled next week (Tuesday the 8th) to do a televised address for students, and all K-12 schools are presumably expected to watch it. Lesson plans have been sent out in advance with activities including this:
Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable for their goals.
A second version is now out there with "help the president" removed and "achieve short-term and long-term education goals" in its place. That's all well and good, but why was "help the president" ever ever ever even considered in the first place? That's some audacity of hope there, Mr. Obama.
3. The National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and the White House Deputy Director for Public Engagement recently held a conference call with a number of members of the arts community (directors, producers, etc) "to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal."
Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the NEA as a federal agency is not allowed to participate in political activities - that's just flat out illegal. The NEA is about the arts. Why on earth would the NEA be getting into health care (that's for HHS), energy (DoE), the environment (EPA), security (the Pentagon) ... you get the idea ...
It's apparent that they know exactly what they're doing, and they know it's illegal, since their phone call was wrapped up thus: "What that looks like legally?…bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely…" Is this another move by Obama to get more ME ME ME glorification and attention? The fact that a pretty high muckety-muck from the White House staff (Deputy Director is no small fish) was one of the call leaders gives me a big fat Yes.
4. There are a few more things reviewed by a friend on his own blog - high school students in Massachusetts had Obama's "Dreams from my Father" on their required summer reading list, and someone "forgot" to spread the word that the students could read any memoir. And the Obama election logo is still everywhere. It's on one website's home page 40 - F-O-R-T-Y - times.
Hey, Mr. President: Governing the United States - helping our economy, creating a good job market, whatever results we have from attempts at fixing health care, defending our country and people against terrorism, figuring out how to get our soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan when they finish the job there, heck - figuring out what they're doing there in the first place, the education system, home foreclosures, student loans, the banking system, whatever -
THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU
This is not the United States of Barack Obama.
Get over yourself.
This is not the United States of Barack Obama.
Get over yourself.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
I pledge allegiance to ...
Barack Obama?
In January with the inauguration, there was a 4-minute video posted on YouTube of a whole bunch of celebrities, saying "I pledge" this and that and very obviously supporting Obama. I posted about it then but blew it off then as something silly from a bunch of stupid actors, and then I completely forgot about it. It's popped up again.
A school principal in Utah (of all places) showed it to an entire elementary school student body this week and now there's an uproar there about it being "leftist propaganda." Now, I don't go for extreme reactions to much of anything, and I'm not tearing my hair out and yelling that Obama is going to take over the country and pronounce himself a dictator.
But I saw a couple of comments this evening on Facebook from friends who also are in the "mentally stable about politics" category that got me curious enough to find the video and watch the whole thing (which I did not do in January). We begin with Obama's quote from election night:
Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.
That's nice enough. The celebrities make verbal pledges. "I pledge" this and "I pledge" that. And that's nice enough too - things like supporting local food banks, smiling more, and being a better parent. There are a number of "pledges" that are lean a bit to the left on policy positions, and a bunch name specific organizations to support. But of course they lean left on policy positions - we're talking Hollywood people here. There's some random thing about reducing slavery and "freeing 1 million people in 5 years." But no context for it, so I'm really not sure specifically what they're talking about (yes, I am aware that there's still slavery in the world).
At 3:17, we get the fun one. Some random "funkadelick" guy covered in tattoos says, "I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama." And at 3:54, Demi Moore: "I pledge to be a servant to our President."
... I beg your pardon? Since when did anyone in this country commit to being a servant to the President? (Since January 20, apparently.)
The final line of the movie is, "Together we will be the change that we seek." It fades from the celebrities to a big huge picture of Obama. (The video, if you really want to watch it, is in the link of the Salt Lake Tribune article.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a big "Go America" video about serving our country end with maybe the flag? Or a big composite picture of lots of people? But the President in his very dramatic "hope" pose, especially after a bunch of people just pledged allegiance to ... him. Not the country or the flag. To the President ... yeah.
In January, it was something to laugh at. Now, with all the rabid hysteria over health care from the Democrats and their extreme reactions to any level of dissent in the citizenry (one word: astroturf), as well as their sales pitch press conferences that take no opposition ... it's starting to get creepy.
In January with the inauguration, there was a 4-minute video posted on YouTube of a whole bunch of celebrities, saying "I pledge" this and that and very obviously supporting Obama. I posted about it then but blew it off then as something silly from a bunch of stupid actors, and then I completely forgot about it. It's popped up again.
A school principal in Utah (of all places) showed it to an entire elementary school student body this week and now there's an uproar there about it being "leftist propaganda." Now, I don't go for extreme reactions to much of anything, and I'm not tearing my hair out and yelling that Obama is going to take over the country and pronounce himself a dictator.
But I saw a couple of comments this evening on Facebook from friends who also are in the "mentally stable about politics" category that got me curious enough to find the video and watch the whole thing (which I did not do in January). We begin with Obama's quote from election night:
Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.
That's nice enough. The celebrities make verbal pledges. "I pledge" this and "I pledge" that. And that's nice enough too - things like supporting local food banks, smiling more, and being a better parent. There are a number of "pledges" that are lean a bit to the left on policy positions, and a bunch name specific organizations to support. But of course they lean left on policy positions - we're talking Hollywood people here. There's some random thing about reducing slavery and "freeing 1 million people in 5 years." But no context for it, so I'm really not sure specifically what they're talking about (yes, I am aware that there's still slavery in the world).
At 3:17, we get the fun one. Some random "funkadelick" guy covered in tattoos says, "I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama." And at 3:54, Demi Moore: "I pledge to be a servant to our President."
... I beg your pardon? Since when did anyone in this country commit to being a servant to the President? (Since January 20, apparently.)
The final line of the movie is, "Together we will be the change that we seek." It fades from the celebrities to a big huge picture of Obama. (The video, if you really want to watch it, is in the link of the Salt Lake Tribune article.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a big "Go America" video about serving our country end with maybe the flag? Or a big composite picture of lots of people? But the President in his very dramatic "hope" pose, especially after a bunch of people just pledged allegiance to ... him. Not the country or the flag. To the President ... yeah.
In January, it was something to laugh at. Now, with all the rabid hysteria over health care from the Democrats and their extreme reactions to any level of dissent in the citizenry (one word: astroturf), as well as their sales pitch press conferences that take no opposition ... it's starting to get creepy.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
radical health care idea - eat your veggies!
This article is a couple of weeks old, but good thoughts at any point ...
The CEO of Whole Foods Market had a column in the Wall Street Journal on August 11, outlining his thoughts on health care reform. His position is that obviously it's needed, but his ideas are quite different from the legislation in Congress right now. He has 8 specific suggestions relating to cost transparency, Health Savings Accounts, and insurance regulation. And then he makes the Captain Obvious statement of the year:
Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.
And seriously - how many people need to have it pounded into their brains that their poor health can be improved not by going to the doctor and taking 15 pills a day, but by taking a walk and eating somewhere besides Applebee's?
Kathleen Parker in the Washington post commented on his column, and I love this quote from her:
A good rule for food consumption also applies to federal legislation: If you read the label (or the bill) and can't make sense of the contents, it's probably not good for you. Take 2-hydroxybiphenyl, for instance. Or acetylated distarch phosphate. Yum.
But let's hear it for the government plan supporters! They're threatening to boycott Whole Foods - their favorite organic grocery store, no less - because the CEO supports the evil Republican ideas for health care reform. If you don't support universal government health care with all your heart and soul, you are evil and heartless and ... holy crap, the sanctimonious attitude of these people is really getting to be nauseating.
The CEO of Whole Foods Market had a column in the Wall Street Journal on August 11, outlining his thoughts on health care reform. His position is that obviously it's needed, but his ideas are quite different from the legislation in Congress right now. He has 8 specific suggestions relating to cost transparency, Health Savings Accounts, and insurance regulation. And then he makes the Captain Obvious statement of the year:
Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.
And seriously - how many people need to have it pounded into their brains that their poor health can be improved not by going to the doctor and taking 15 pills a day, but by taking a walk and eating somewhere besides Applebee's?
Kathleen Parker in the Washington post commented on his column, and I love this quote from her:
A good rule for food consumption also applies to federal legislation: If you read the label (or the bill) and can't make sense of the contents, it's probably not good for you. Take 2-hydroxybiphenyl, for instance. Or acetylated distarch phosphate. Yum.
But let's hear it for the government plan supporters! They're threatening to boycott Whole Foods - their favorite organic grocery store, no less - because the CEO supports the evil Republican ideas for health care reform. If you don't support universal government health care with all your heart and soul, you are evil and heartless and ... holy crap, the sanctimonious attitude of these people is really getting to be nauseating.
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