A Proposal In Order To Save The Union

If there is one thing that the Left and Right agree on, it’s that government is broken.  The details of why are vastly different, but at least they agree that it needs to be fixed.  What follows are just some of the major changes to government that I would make in an attempt to set right the huge mess we have today.  What you won’t see is a partisan redesign that strongly favors any political party.  I am not a member of any such organization, and I don’t believe there is one that represents my interests.  What you will find is a common theme, one directed by the very principle that our Constitution is built upon, a government for the people, by the people.

Abolition of all political parties.

Political parties have demonstrated consistently that they do not represent the American people.  They represent their own interests, predominantly the accumulation of power and wealth.  The do not govern with the interest of the people in mind, only their own self-serving agenda.  These are the very reasons George Washington himself advised against the rise of political parties at the outset.  His wisdom was ignored, but it’s never to late to take heed and reverse course.  The loss of political parties also means that an elected official must represent the people that elected them, not a powerful special interest group for elitist control.

Public funding for elections.

I know, I know, that’s a very high cost that has to be made up in some way.  While there are details to work out, such as how to pay for it and how much everyone should get, the benefits outweigh the cost.  You see, I’m not talking about additional funding for campaigns.  I’m talking about strictly limiting funding for campaigns to only public funds.  Candidates can not use their own personal wealth.  They can not receive political donations from PACs or corporations.  They can’t be bought by sweetheart deals from powers beyond.  By eliminating the use of private wealth we also severely limit a wealthy elite from seizing control because everyone has the same amount of cash.  A more level field has never existed.

Term limits for Congress.

I propose that term limits for the House be set to a maximum of four three-year terms and the Senate be limited to two six-year terms.  Both Houses would potentially have longer service than any single president and could govern during three different presidencies.  This gives the legislative body more consistency than any administration, but the nature of term limits prevents career politicians from becoming so entrenched that graft and corruption are practically a given.  Also, extending the length of a term in the House by a year slows down the immediate drive to begin campaigning on the first day of the job.  

Elected officials can not accept gifts from lobbyists.

This doesn’t mean that lobbyists are to be banned, only that special interest organizations cannot be permitted to unduly influence the course of legislation by bribing politicians with “gifts” or sending them on trips or other such nonsense.  Additionally, lobbyists can’t be permitted to take them out for dinner or some other private meeting.  When a lobbyist meets with an elected official, it must be in that official’s government office and during normal business hours.  A public log of who they met with must all be kept and published so we, the people, can track who is trying to persuade our representatives.  

Reverse Citizens United decision.

Corporations are not people, pure and simple.  The idea of corporate personhood is preposterous and dangerous.  Unfettered spending sprees by corporations, even indirectly, in support of one politician or another still permits undue influence.  While I do believe organizations, including PACs, businesses, and unions, have a right to publish a statement of support or opposition to a candidate for office, the idea that they can spend as much money as they want in order to produce propaganda to sway the electorate is a terrifying proposal.  We have already limited campaign funding, and now we must limit indirect support.  Organizations are not people and therefore are not subject to the full application or support of the 1st Amendment.  In order to maintain a government by and for the people, actual flesh and blood people need to be the deciding force, not businesses or other organizations.

There are other changes I would propose, but these tend towards operational details like reminding the Senate that their job is to represent their home state and its interests at the federal level while the House is to represent the people of a specific area in that state.  As you can see, these are not small changes.  They are big, big overhauls but I believe they would be the foundation upon which our government would be returned to us, the American people, and taken away from powerful, elite groups that care not one damn bit about what is good for us.  We are the majority,  we are the masses, and this is our country.  It belongs to us and I want it back!

Raising Arizona Cain

I often worry about people I know from Arizona. There seems in them to be a combination of extreme arrogance that would make a Texan jealous and a level of stupidity that would make the most ignorant Appalachian appear to be Einstein.

The New York Times offers an amazing assessment of what it takes to get an Arizonan riled. Using the tax payers' property as a cash cow doesn't faze them one little bit, nor does the arrival of those damn liberals from Jon Stewart's Daily Show to make fun of the situation.

No, it takes something far more important to get Arizonans upset. It takes not having any public outhouses on the Interstates anymore. That just chaps their hides!

NYT also reports that Arizona has the largest budget shortfall of any state when measured as a percentage of the total state budget. They don't cite a link or source to support this statement, but the state Department of Transportation allegedly has a $100 million dollar shortfall and had to take action. There was no reserve.

It seems that the Arizona Legislature was under a great deal of pressure to pass a budget which dealt with the state's $3 billion deficit and not include any additional taxes. They slashed aid for various needy children programs to facilitate this effort. Needy children don't vote, so who cares, right? So if they were willing to throw kids under the bus, you know they mean business! So sorry Arizona travelers! There just wasn't any money to keep these public conveniences available. We're only doing what California, Colorado, Georgia, Vermont and Virginia have done!

"Why don’t they charge a quarter or something?" whines one woman interviewed by the Times. “There was one rest stop between here (Pine, AZ) and Phoenix, and we really needed it.” But another woman reveals what is truly important to your typical Arizonan: “I honestly think they are setting us up because they want to do a tax increase, I think by shutting down things people want, they will give us one.”

Is it not ever thus? You get in financial trouble, and you are on your own. But when the big guys need assistance, they put you on the spot to bail them out with your tax money. But our second distaff dissenter ignores the forest for the trees. The government might well shut down valued assets like public highway convenience stops, but they cannot "give" the tax payers an increase unless the tax payers do nothing to stop them.

Here in California, anti-taxers are on the spot whenever a Sacramento politician even hints at a new tax. In fact, they are almost as fast as when the California Legislature in thinking about cutting a valued public service - like road maintenance. This state lives, thrives, or dies on its highways. Nothing infuriates a Californian more than to not be able to get their motor runnin' and head out on the highway lookin' for adventure,

Yet they aren't about to willingly pay for these highways to hell-raising. They blame the high costs of road maintenance on Cal-Trans workers for being so greedy by not working for Wal-Mart wages. I would love to see how many Californians would work on third shift with no fixed schedule, and have to work in foul weather conditions, amid dangerous and callous drivers who think it a game to see how close they can come to hitting a road worker while driving 80 miles an hour, and only accept whatever it is that Wal-Mart actually pays (It works out to less than minimum wage, I assure you!).

But California has a much larger population to distribute the road load. When the California cut our budget for roadside rest stops, no one really raised an eyebrow, because there are lots of gas stations and fast food restaurants into which a little rest must fall. Not so in Arizona. One can drive for hours and not see much except the sand and bushes along the side of the roads. It isn't too much different from when the stage coaches used to cross the desert; not an air conditioned 7-11 or a Circle K in sight for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles!

So the plight of our deprived Arizonans raises the much bigger issue of what we do about the economic reasons we are all about to have to make adjustments, not only in our standard of living, but in our standards generally. Closing the rest stops only means that we go back to squatting behind a bush and hope that there is no rattlesnake taking a nap in it.

Arizonans should be paying attention to what is happening in Colorado Springs. Up there, they have essentially eliminated ALL civic services because the people don't want to pay for them anymore. I haven't researched it in detail yet, but I suspect that the people there don't feel they use little things like street lights very much and don't want to have to pay for them. Public Safety? They think their Glock will protect them just fine, thank you very much, so who needs police or fire when the pioneers had neither?

All of these situations point out a sad truth about life in America today. There never was a free lunch, and it's now time to go over the list of where the money goes. Many things is going to have to come to an end and that is going to be that. You can't have it all. Only the people have yet to catch up with that reality. They still want the world and they want it now! Free! At No Cost!

I just wish there was enough wisdom in the people to do more than complain after the fact. This reckoning has been a long coming time, and people chose to believe economic fairy tales instead. Had earlier action been taken, these closings -and many other painful losses- could have been avoided if wisdom and foresight were common attributes. But venality and selfishness are the norm today. We can no longer pay to play, so we can just go shit on the roadsides.

You Want Obama?

Read this and go after him.

According to The New York Times:

"Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying-Medicare rates...or controlled by the secretary of health and human services. 'We have an agreement with the White House that I'm very confident will be seen all the way through conference', one of the industry lobbyists, Chip Kahn, director of the Federation of American Hospitals, told a Capitol Hill newsletter...Industry lobbyists say they are not worried [about a public option.] 'We trust the White House,' Mr. Kahn said."

I don't care if you are a Democrat, Republican, or an Independent. It doesn't matter if you are for or against a public option, or whether you care about health care reform or not. Maybe it's the lousy condition of the roads you care about, or the fact that your utility bills are shooting through the roof (have you forgotten Enron already?). What ever it is, some corporation is angling to make a big buck off of you. They are looking for the law to give them the power to take you to the cleaners. They go to the White House which is open for business (but not for you!) and is making deals with private entities long before the Congress even gets to pretend to deliberate on a bill as if they are making law. They are only going to rubber-stamp the decision made through the Oval Office. That's what they get paid handsomely to do. It has been this way for many years, and involves both parties. Where in this process is there any input from YOU, the voting taxpaying citizen of this nation?

Come November, if you vote for an incumbent, then you are voting to allow this sort of shady back room dealing to continue to erode your quality of life. Have you not lost enough already? Who is to say that this collusion between the public and private sectors won't be extended to limiting more of your freedoms and curtailing your liberty?

Many of you are gun owners. You fear that your guns will be confiscated. What if some corporation decides that you are a threat to them, or maybe decides that they can make big bucks if they convince the government that they can protect you better - For LESS! - than government entities like the police or the military can - as long as you are disarmed? How long do you think it would be before they come for your Glock? How are you going to fight them? And I don't mean with your little 9mm, either. I mean politically.

The Supreme Court just took all limits off corporate political contributions under a tortured definition of free speech, yet can you match the money it takes to turn your Congressperson dishonest if the corporation buys the necessary votes to take your guns away? Most of you don't make enough to have a very good life now, assuming that you are still employed! You know what talks and what walks, and if the last several elections have not yet convinced you that you are not important to the larger scheme of things, then you haven't been paying attention.

Maybe you were too busy trying to prove Obama was not a citizen, or that he was some kind of terrorist plant, or a Muslim. But while you were so distracted, he was at the center of a tug-of-war over which group of corrupt politicians was going to sell you out. He can do nothing without both groups agreeing on how they will divide the swag, nor can they do anything without him. Replace him with Sarah Palin, and what is really going to change besides the face speaking the lies? The purchasers of the law still win no matter which corrupt organization holds the reins. They just shift the money to one group when the other group pisses them off.

It's going on right now with the Wall Street banks now that they got almost $24 trillion of YOUR MONEY. Now that they are back in the plush, they are currently reported to have ceased donating to the Democrats and have shifted their support to the to the Republicans in order to keep what they were given, and using the money given to them from YOUR taxes which was intended to bail them out from their lousy gambling to do so. But you can be sure that YOU will be the loser.

The only way to fix this is to return control of the government to those who are supposed to be the government. That is you and I, the voters. This won't happen as long as a rich private entity representing some business, or industry, or some very wealthy individual can buy the law for their benefit under the mistaken legal notion that money speaks louder than the voice of the electorate. The Supreme Court Citizens United decision must be reversed, or else everything you hold dear about this nation will be taken away from you and sold to the highest bidder - and with your tax money loaned to them to do so. They can't be trusted to repay that loan, leaving you to have to pay the bill with your reduced quality of life one more time.

Are you going to let them?

Stronger together, but working individually.

I'll put this question to you in hopes of inspiration. What do we do about it?  In a nation that has always celebrated rugged individualism, how do we get people to realize that the Founding Fathers unified behind the thought that we all hang together or we all hang alone? To talk of the strength of the community acting together for mutual benefit is to surely raise the hackles of "every red-blooded true American" against the resurgent rise of "Communism, Marxism, Socialism, Maoism" and any other "-ism" that the Corporate Fascists can find in a dictionary. There isn't even a single unified front from the Left. We are a scattered gaggle, bereft of direction, vocation, and leadership. Progressives are left (if you'll excuse the pun) out in the cold for daring to be egalitarian in our goals, as "Liberals," so often in favor corporations and free trade as dearly as the wingnuts to the Right, hurl insults at us ala Rahm. Most of us would rather talk the talk than actually do something. I, myself, can be dreadfully guilty of this crime; held immobile by frustration and impotent rage. How, then, do we get people to listen to us when the facts bore the shit out of people and they'd rather drink a beer with a corporate fascist than listen to the rallying cries and wake up calls declaring our perilous situation? I'm at a loss, and I'm hoping you have some ideas. I'm just plain out of them.

It's Enough To Make You Sick!

There's a good reason why there's been such a large gap in my postings this last couple of weeks, and I've got the Doctor's note to prove it!

Simultaneously, I developed a couple of unrelated medical conditions that required immediate attention. I was in my doctor's office a total of four times across two weeks, saw a specialist once, was in various labs for testing five times, and spent a morning in the ER. I also have a total of seven medications that were prescribed to me as I got to experience "the best medical care in the world" that the Republicans fight mightily to defend against reality and reform.

They should have to endure my travails. Then we'll see if they still believe that Americans have "the best medical care in the world".

As the first condition erupted, and I had to get in to see my doctor without waiting the six weeks it now takes to get an appointment, I ended up seeing the Nurse Practitioner. She prescribed some medication (which did nothing but make money for Amneal Pharmaceuticals) and sent me on my way.

That night, the second condition erupted, and I was back to see the N.P. again. This time, Amneal again benefited, only they had to share the wealth with the Watson and Glenmark companies. But wait! That's Not ALL! I was sent out for an MRI which was to be processed immediately, and the results provided to my doctor by the end of that day.

That didn't happen. The MRI lab was backed up because the scanner was acting up and not taking good images. Then, the radiologist who was supposed to read the images and write the report didn't do so for several days, leaving me hanging without any real relief from the pain I was experiencing. For this my insurance paid him a princely sum, I'm sure.

The next day, I had pain so bad that I had to go to the ER. They wanted to access the MRI files and could not (which is how I found out that they weren't processed yet). Their MRI "ran slow" and was always backed up with immediate needs being plugged in between the scheduled scannings, so they opted for a CT scan. They drew blood for lab tests to check my blood sugar and maybe a few other things, but they didn't tell my everything. I guess that one of these things was to see if there was any good reason I couldn't tolerate the contrast dye necessary for the CT scan. Unfortunately for me, they couldn't do that until my doctor said that the contrast dye wouldn't cause me to go into diabetic shock. So I had to wait, holding my cranium in an improvised vise made from my hands to quell the pain. I was also to go have an X-ray taken to back up the CT.

Finally, everything they wanted to do had been done, and they handed me a prescription for yet another pain killer (which made Squib some money this time), and sent me on my way. I was under orders to see my doctor as soon as possible, which was two days hence due to the weekend.

Back to see himself this time. He goes over all the reports from the scans and the lab work and what not, and hands me yet another prescription for yet another pain killer -which made Watson a little richer- and a referral to a specialist for my first condition.

The specialist checks me out, and hands me yet another prescription to replace an earlier one, which brought Eli Lilly onto the gravy train. He also orders more lab work (not yet completed, so it doesn't get included in my out-of-pocket tally below) and a follow-up visit.

I had a follow-up scheduled with my primary doctor to see how I was tolerating all the drug changes, and he told me that one of my sudden conditions was being caused by arthritis, and that there isn't much they can do for me (meaning that my insurance company isn't likely to be willing to pay for it).

At this point, out of my own pocket, I've spent over $400 in copays and deductibles, an amount that roughly matches my payroll deduction for the coverage in the first place. My insurance company had to have paid about ten times that amount, and I am no closer to having either condition successfully treated.

So much for "the best medical care in the world" !