Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on parts of the Healthcare Bill (nicknamed ObamaCare), the original bill fell short of its mission – to lower or slow healthcare costs and make healthcare available to everyone. Unfortunately, the Single Payer healthcare initiative was blocked by the Republicans as was many other parts of the bill. Then the fear tactics were started to further diminish the effectiveness of true healthcare reform. Rumors (untrue) of “death panels” and “socialized medicine” that would ruin our high standards of care, and “refusal of treatment” after you reached a maximum amount… all lies and rumors to turn unaware citizens against actual healthcare reform. What we ended up with was a hodgepodge bill, over 2,000 pages – mostly to clarify wordings to appease lawyers. The good parts – children can stay on plans longer, pre-existing conditions are no longer cause for denial of coverage. For some reason,
Read more →Ever play the game Monopoly? That is capitalism in a nutshell. There is a bank that holds the money, a banker that handles the money, and players that spend the money. There is a finite amount of money… in other words, unless you print more, all you have is what comes with the game. Everyone starts with the same amount of money. As you move around the board, you have the opportunity to purchase real estate (property), utilities, or transportation (railroads). Part of the game is luck, part is being smart in what you buy and what you spend your money on. Buy and spend too much too soon, you could go bankrupt if you run out of money. Never take a chance and not buy anything, you will eventually go bankrupt by paying rent to others. As the game progresses, you will soon have the rich and the poor…. the rich have made good
Read more →As details emerge, it looks like the much touted Mortgage Bailout missed the mark. I had high hopes for finally a program that would actually help homeowners that got trapped in high interest mortgages. Not only are just a small percentage of distressed homeowners covered by the bill, it provides reduction of principle which I do not agree with. What many millions of homeowners on the brink of losing their home need is an equitable refinance package that would lower their interest rate, thus lowering their payments. To lower interest rate to current market rates is not asking a lot. I personally know of a homeowner, single mom, with a high mortgage and a high interest rate of 9%. She has equity in her home but can not get to it due to her now lower income from employment. She can’t sell the house because the lender took back the title. Her lender
Read more →Myth: We have so much oil here in US, if only we drilled for it, gas prices would come down. If we have 100 years of oil underground and start drilling now, what happens in 100 yrs. assuming we still need oil for some things? Why not let Arab countries deplete their supplies first, then we will be in the driver’s seat. We talk about future generations straddled with debts of today… what do we tell them when we have no oil left because we wanted to have low gas prices today? If a for-profit company drills oil here and can sell it for $150/barrel overseas, how much do you think they will sell it to the US for? Unless we nationalize oil production in the US, don’t look for prices to come down anytime in the near future whether we drill or not. Capitalism is a supply and demand business. The
Read more →I am so glad John McCain is not our president. At one point in the 2008 elections I even thought about voting for him. I see now, he and many other Republicans still have the caveman mentality…. swing the club, ask questions later. I feel terrible for the Syrians and what is going on there. Bashar al-Assad, Syrian’s dictator, has to go… no question. The killing has to stop. This is genocide. The world needs to unite against any country that uses this type of behaviour to quell dissidents. And that is the point… the World needs to unite against Syria. This can not be OUR war (again). If we go in as McCain wants, we can easily destroy the Syrian dynasty, but what then? That was Bush’s problem when he decided to do Shock & Awe in Iraq. Yes, we can swing our club… but then what? As leaders
Read more →My big pet peeve is receiving blatantly untrue emails from supposedly intelligent people, most of which depict Obama as evil. I don’t mind differing opinions from my own, but I don’t like the propaganda of emails spreading lies as if they were true. We all have received our share of emails depicting Obama as a Muslim without a US birth certificate, intent on destroying America. One I received today was titled “HR4646 (Bad News)” about Obama wanting to charge a 1% tax on all deposits made to banks, and that is why they now only have direct deposit of SS checks. Most of these type emails take a little truth and spin it into a fabricated lie. Another received last week is a video link entitled “This will knock your socks off!” and the video talks about the healthcare bill (ObamaCare) with blatant lies about the bill presented as absolute fact.
Read more →The ultra conservatives reached a new low when Rush Limbaugh called Sarah Fluke a slut having too much sex when she testified that she uses contraceptives at the congressional hearing. At the same time, when did birth control become a government issue? Insurance companies can discuss whether they want to cover contraceptives or not and how much they want to pay… but the Federal Government?? Why would the Obama administration feel compelled to get involved with this issue and mandate that insurance companies have to cover contraceptives? I’m all for contraceptives. Heck, I’m all for insurance companies helping cover the cost. I think pharmaceutical companies should lower the cost. But talk about government getting involved in our personal life… bad decision all the way around. Leave it to our elected officials to make a mountain out of a molehill. What’s up with a 5 “man” panel to discuss female contraception?
Read more →Do you believe the President can control fuel costs? Do conservative Republicans really want the Government to interfere with Free Market economics? “Drill Baby, Drill” will not fix our immediate problems and probably not our future problems. The Keystone Pipeline that everyone touts as a job builder (and environment killer) is to transport oil from Canada to the Gulf for exportation overseas. The US exported more fuel than it imported in 2011 (Dept. of Energy). So where is the problem? We don’t buy oil from Iran, so that isn’t the problem. Could it be there is no immediate problem? That oil prices are artificially inflated by oil speculators. The same speculators that helped cause the 2008 collapse? No significant regulations have been put in place to stop the exact thing that wreaked havoc in the market 3 years ago. But bottom line, the President cannot control fuel prices. And if
Read more →Politics have consumed the media and our lives for over a year now. All leading up to Nov. 2012 election. Party politics have been going on for years, but never worse than the last few. Every decision our elected officials make is based on getting re-elected. And, because party lines have beed drawn so deeply in the sand, voting on bills is no longer about whether it is good for the country, but whether it is good for the party. Forget about compromise … on both sides. Both parties are just as bad. Politics is no longer about running our country and keeping it the best country in the world. Politics is about money, power, and staying in power. I’m fed up with it and you should be too.
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