RIGGING THE VOTE

I am amazed at the blatant, cynical and unpatriotic voter fraud taking place in this country today.  It is taking place in the states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to name a few.  Republican held legislatures and governors have passed voter ID laws that are defrauding voters out of their right to vote under the guise of stopping a nonexistent voter impersonation “problem”.  There has never been an arrest or conviction of this kind of “voter fraud” in the history of Pennsylvania as stipulated buy their own Attorney General. 

To make matters worse, they found a judge who is a severely intellectually challenged right wing ideologue to rule in favor of Pennsylvania’s fraudulent law last week.  It is under appeal. 

The right wing knows they can’t win this election on their policies of hatred and exclusion, their plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program where they give you a chit and send you out into the insurance marketplace to find your own healthcare, their plan to gut Social Security and Medicaid, to say nothing of their tax plans to further enrich the wealthy on the backs of the middle class.  These policies are not favored by the majority of Americans.

So they pass voter suppression laws that restrict voting hours, eliminate early voting and pass voter ID laws to literally take the vote away from citizens who have voted legally for many years.

Is this the democracy we grew up in?  We have been fighting for years and years to make it possible for every legal citizen to vote.  Are we going to let these bullies take us backward?

Rigging the vote is unconstitutional, illegal, unpatriotic if not treasonous and it is unconscionable.  This is a true definition of voter fraud. 

Don’t let these people steal our democracy.

AND THAT'S NO BULL.

THE TRUTH ABOUT "JOB CREATORS"

The Republican Party has long been promoting the myth that the wealthy and big businesses are “job creators”.  Yes, they do hire people when they need to manufacture something but they don’t create the demand for it. 

I have a friend who owns a small business and I asked him “If I gave you $50,000.00 would you hire another service person?”  He said “Of course not, I wouldn’t need one.”  Then I asked him “If you had an additional $300,000.00 in sales, would you hire a new service person?”  His response was “With that amount of additional business, I would need one.”

 My friend would not hire anyone if he had additional money.  If he had additional sales, he would be compelled to.  In this case, my friend’s customers created a job by purchasing more of his products. 

This is what I call “The Universal Rule of Job Creation”. 

If someone buys an appliance, car, truck, boat, box of cereal, or any other product you choose, some company somewhere will have to produce more of these things to replace what we purchased. 

When we buy more stuff, factory production has to increase to keep up with demand.  A perfect example of this is the U.S. auto industry.  When sales were down, they were laying off.  We are now buying more cars and they are hiring.

Enough of this “job creators are the wealthy” malarkey!   We are all job creators every time we buy something.  And on the way, us job creators have enriched those wealthy corporations who have produced all the products we purchase.

I believe it was Paul Wellstone who said “If everyone is working, then everything is working."

Our system is truly “demand and supply”

AND THAT'S NO BULL.

A CRUMMY WEBSITE?

What a joke! The Obama administration's feeble efforts to battle these horrible voter ID laws is to start a website to inform voters of their state's new rules.    http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/obama-campaign-launches-effort-to-combat-voter-id
I would have liked to been a fly on that wall.  Imagine the collective genius of the White House sitting around the meeting table:
Adviser  #1 "We really have to figure out a way to stop the states from enforcing these unconstitutional voter ID laws this election."
Adviser #2 "I say we file for injunctions against these laws in every state to halt their implementation until the courts determine their constitutionality."
Attorney General Holder. "Well, um, ah gee whiz guys, that really doesn't
sound tough enough.   Would we actually have to take someone to court?"
Adviser #1 "Yes we would, sir!  We'll make life real miserable for them."
 Holder. " I don't know guys, it seems awfully confrontational. Are you sure?
Adviser #2 "That's about as tough as we can get at this point, sir"
Holder gets a gleam in his eye and slaps the table. "Ive got it!  Let's start a website explaining all the new rules to these people. That'll hit the states where it really hurts.  Let 'em have it right in the old bread basket!
Adviser #1 "But sir, many seniors and poor people don't have computers.  How will they get the information?
Holder. "Come on man, this is the 21st century, everyone has a computer!
Do these idiots in the administration have a clue?  They are taking a chance on losing this election because Holder is the most confrontational averse Attorney General in the history of the country as evidenced by all the criminal charges filed to date against the Wall Street crime families.

And that's NO BULL.

FOR THE LIFE OF ME

For the life of me, I can’t figure out the modern day “conservative”. They appear to have lost their empathy for the less fortunate. Facts seem to be totally irrelevant if they don’t agree with their viewpoint. Many have become hateful, spiteful, angry, frightened people who are willing to support positions that are contrary to their own best interests. Like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders, some are union members voting for republicans who will turn our state into a right to work state. If the “divide and conquer” tape doesn’t convince you Walker has a hidden agenda, what will?

If Walker wins, the Wisconsin I see will have a privatized school system. We will be a right to work “for less” state. There will be no collective bargaining, private or public. Planned Parenthood will be gone. There won’t be any healthcare for the poor. Job losses will continue and we’ll give more tax breaks to the wealthy. The state will fall deeper in debt. He will sell off state assets and there will be more rampant cronyism. We will experience more pollution of our lakes and streams and less aid for towns and counties. Roads and bridges will continue to deteriorate. Effectively, there will be no DNR. We will see continued acrimony in Madison with millions of dollars coming in from outsiders trying to run our state.

Let’s not forget the real possibility of watching our Governor being perp walked down the steps of the court house. Won’t we be proud!

Do they want us to be the Mississippi of the north? Don’t buy into all the propaganda Koch money can spew on TV and mailers. They’re trying to play us all for suckers. Don’t fall for it.

YOUR NEW BOSS, MITT?

Does Mitt Romney remind you of anyone? Maybe someone you worked for in the past? Not necessarily your immediate supervisor but his boss. You know, the "suit" from the VP's office. The guy who never did a day's labor in his life. The guy who gives you the reluctant "limp dishrag" handshake? The guy who walks through the plant and spy's you wiping the sweat off your forehead and runs to your boss and demands he dismiss you on the spot for loafing. The guy who looks at firing people as sport. We all know this guy. Clueless, aloof, has a mean streak and no sympathy for anyone working with their hands. Most of us have worked with our hands at some time in our lives and can recognize this guy. Is this the guy you want to be President of the United Sates?

ENOUGH?

Last week at the high school my son attends, they had a “lockdown and emergency evacuation drill” in the event there were ever to be a shooter in the school.
This drill, I think, was generally a good idea but what does the need to even have it say about the world we now live in?
To my knowledge, students bringing a gun to school and killing people is a rather recent phenomenon. What has brought us to need to run drills in case our children become potential murder victims while attending high school? This is total insanity! Our kids can no longer feel safe even in their classrooms. What’s next? Cops in every classroom? Arm the teachers? Arm the entire student body? Arm everybody?
We are becoming so desensitized by all the shooting and violence that surrounds us that we accept it as a fact of life. Where is the outrage? Why are we so docile? Why do we shout at each other over political smoke and snake oil while completely overlooking the horrible violence that surrounds us each day? When will we say collectively: enough?

SPECIES

As a species, we humans are a real piece of work. We have perpetrated violence on one another since Cain and Abel. We even have the audacity to think of ourselves as cultured and civilized while at the same time engaging in tribal warfare all over the world.
Some have managed to twist our bibles; you pick the religion, and interpret what was intended as a moral compass into justification to hate and kill. Throughout history our leaders have understood how to play us against one another in order to gain wealth and power. Nothing has changed but the sophistication of our weapons. We can now kill more people than ever with less effort than ever before.
It has become easy for those in power to influence millions overnight. They continue to play upon our fears. They continue to point out who we should hate. We continue to fall for it. How much longer are we going to remain so gullible? How much longer are we going to blindly follow these hate mongers?
Not only are we barbaric, we are intellectually lazy. If we do not search for and speak truth to the powerful, we are doomed to follow them right to the gates of whatever you envision as hell. By then it will be too late.

Good Things From Unions

If you are not among the top three percent of the money earners in the United States, why would you vote for a Republican? It has been borne out by their actions that this is the only segment of the population they want to help.
Around here a lot of small business people feel they should support the Republicans because, after all, they support business. They are correct. Republicans support BIG business. They view small business as a gnat buzzing around their head, a minor nuisance at best. It is no longer the Eisenhower Republican party. The Republicans left Ike as well as Reagan many years ago.
I don’t understand why unions are being so vilified. I have been involved with the building trades unions both as a journeyman tradesman and an employer for the last 40 years. It has been, overall, a good relationship.
Of all the benefits to all workers, nonunion included, that unions have brought us, there is a benefit most people are not aware of.
In 1962 the Asbestos Workers international, pipe and boiler insulators, contributed much needed funding to Dr. Irving Selikoff’s research on asbestos related disease. As a direct result of this research, asbestos in building materials was taken off the market in 1974. This union funded research saved many thousands of people from cancer and mesothelioma.
There have been many other beneficial union funded projects in the workplace. We must stop this mindless union bashing and pause for a moment to reflect upon how the unions have improved all of our lives.

For My Wisconsin Friends

I think we all learned from the last election that voting counts and that not voting counts equally. I believe a lot of liberals and independents did not show up to vote last election and that is the reason we’re in the fix we currently find ourselves.
If you want to restore some sanity in Madison, please get out and vote for Shelly Moore on July 12h. This primary is every bit as important as the recall election itself. We must show the right wingers that we will not tolerate these attempts to confuse the voters with a fake candidate, who by his own admission, will not even be in the state after the primary to run a campaign.
The right wing extremists in Madison are being fairly quiet until the recalls are over. They have to slow down their radical agenda lest we be reminded of why they need some checks on them and their national puppet masters. These people don’t care about us. They do care about the Koch brothers, Karle Rove and the Koch sponsored right wing think tanks that are setting their agenda. If they prevail in these recalls it’s going to be “Katy bar the door”. You ain’t seen nothin yet!
These people are selling our state to the highest bidder. Please vote for Shelly Moore so we can start to take Wisconsin back from the out of state special interests. I don’t want to live in Fitzwalkerstan, I want my state back!
Remember, if you are a registered voter, you do NOT need state approved voter ID for this election. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misleading you.
Your vote counts more now than ever!

Wisconsin Bile

Why do Republican politicians continuously need to set an enemy before us? Why do they always have a target for frustrated people to hate? Why do they always try to make us afraid? Why are they trying to make us so mean spirited, uncaring, and selfish?
The new enemies de juor are the union teachers. They paint them as lazy, overpaid drains on our economy. Really? The person who has the biggest positive influence on our children other than parents are their teachers! We have a wonderful education system in Wisconsin with smart, dedicated, caring professional teachers. Most of these people could have done much better financially in the private sector. No one gets into teaching for the money. It has always been a calling. These people are heroes every day, teaching our kids critical thinking. That is just a part of their job. How about teaching respect for others, nonviolent behavior, athletic and academic competition, guidance toward their individual talents? Preparing them for the next level in their education? Spending extra time outside of the classroom to help someone who didn’t understand something?
Why should teachers tolerate being vilified and publicly abused daily by politicians and those who buy into the bile and hatred they’re selling?
Why, with the internet at their fingertips, do so many Americans choose to continue their ignorance?
The Republicans are trying to privatize our schools and this hate mongering is just the first volley in the fight. Quit allowing these evil people to influence you! Use the critical thinking you were taught in school to recognize this for the scam that it is. The only ones who benefit from privatization are the wealthy. The rest of us lose.

Test Tube

The Republicans are testing us to determine whether they have dumbed us down to the point where we will believe the most outrageous lies they can think of.
Wisconsin is nothing but a petri dish for Scott Walkers rich, elitist right wing Overlords. They are playing him and his minions, the Fitzgerald brothers, for suckers. They are blindly carrying out their latest strategy for destroying our democracy and creating a one party ruling class. If they should fail, the Overlords will steam role right over them on their way to find a few more suckers to try the next ploy to take our democracy away. Scott Who?
I, for one, do not appreciate being the subject of experimentation by Scott Walker and his right wing, Overlords.
Right wing Republicans do not care one whit for the concerns, or for that matter, the wellbeing of their constituents. They look upon us with great disdain, as if we were a bothersome child tugging at their pant leg for attention. They just shake us off and go about the business of their out of state Overlords.
Whenever the Republicans are howling the loudest about what the Democrats are doing, that is what the Republicans are doing. The old diversionary tactic of pointing in one direction and when you look, they stab you in the back with their other hand.
Just a reminder. The voter ID law is NOT in effect for the recall elections. If you are a registered voter, YOU WILL NOT BE REQUIRED TO PRESENT ANY STATE APPROVED IDENTIFICATION DOCUMENTS. The poll workers may ask you but you are not required to produce any.

The Good Old Days

Right wing conservatives have a dream. Their dream is for a cheap and fearful workforce without a voice. They sigh and pine for the “good old days” when coal miners lived in company housing, bought at the company store and went to the company doctor for their healthcare, only to die physically broken and in debt to the company. How about the “good old days” in the garment industry when women worked sixty to seventy hours a week in horrible conditions and maybe got Sundays off. Ahhhhh, if only they could get back to the “good old days” when 13 year old children were forced to work sixty hours a week. They can only imagine how wonderful it must have been before OSHA came along with all those troublesome safety regulations. It was so much easier to replace a dead or maimed worker than to provide a safe workplace. Back in the “good old days” the rabble was so much easier to control when education was for only those who could afford it. If only they could send American Muslims to intern camps like they did to Japanese Americans during WW II in the “good old days”. They yearn for the “good old days” when there was no pesky internet. The right wing wants working people to be just like they were during the Great Depression...broke, sick, hungry and scared.

Scott Walker Giving Wisconsin Away

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has included in his new budget proposal the optional selling off of the state owned steam and electric generating facilities to private enterprise without even a bid process. His reason? “It will save us money.”
What we’re talking about here are mostly steam generating facilities for the university system and other state owned buildings. Walker wants to sell these boiler plants, most of which are in the middle of campuses, to private owners. The state doesn’t even have to go through the bid process, thereby not getting the highest price for these plants.
Currently, the state entities that use the steam for heating and cooling their buildings are getting this energy for cost. Many of the boiler plants have been paid for long ago. There is of course, operational maintenance and employee costs.
If the state sells these facilities, let’s say to Koch Industries, they must have a return on investment or ROI. This means that they have to charge enough for their product to pay for the physical plant they just purchased and earn a reasonable profit. This is basic business 101.
The beauty of this for the business is they have a guaranteed captive customer who has nowhere else to go to purchase their energy.
Let’s take this to its logical end. After years of letting these plants fall into disrepair while ignoring maintenance to increase profits, big business will conveniently walk away at the end of their contract and leave the taxpayer holding the bag for the repairs needed to keep these facilities running.
Does this sound anything like “saving the tax payers money”? Going from purchasing their energy at cost to lining big business pockets? This is an insult to the taxpayer’s intelligence. How dare the Governor take them for such fools!

Hatred is the Badge of the Ignorant.

For some strange reason, ignorant people get elected to public office and somehow end up on the national stage. They first get media attention by making outrageous statements. The more attention, the more outrageous they get. They then start to believe their own hateful bile as other ignorant people come out from under whatever they live under and loudly support these radical positions. These politicians carry around a pocket copy of the constitution but only quote the parts they can twist into supporting their radical positions, all the while shouting out angry divisive speeches and trying to keep us scared of one another.
Many Republican politicians today, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, there are many to pick from, will try to convince us to be afraid of or hate something. It doesn’t really matter what, Death panels, Acorn, as long as we are afraid of it. They need something to rally us around and picking a virtually harmless entity and vilifying it is both intellectually lazy and harmful to the fabric of our Nation. They don’t have the ambition or the intelligence to embrace the problems of the day and try to find solutions. They just want to keep us afraid and hateful.
Are we a nation of cowards flocking under the wing of some spiteful, hateful, fear mongering ignorant politician mindlessly following wherever they lead us?
We have very serious problems in this country. Problems that can be solved by serious, intelligent people. I want them to be smarter than some “Joe Six Pack” In order to best solve the issues that face this Nation every day.
All of this hatefulness and fear mongering is nothing but a distraction and a waste of valuable time. We must absolutely stop electing these unpatriotic fools who don’t have a plan other than dividing us and making us afraid.
Democracy is not easy. We must put our shoulders to the stone and take our country back from those who would destroy it with fear and ignorance.

I CAN'T STAND IT ANY LONGER. I'VE HAD ENOUGH.

I cannot believe the people of this country, at least a majority of voters, would elect the party that put our economy in the tank, back in control.
The Large Corporate Owned pundits are screaming “The dems are going to lose the house and the senate”. The pollsters are showing a lot of the races too close to call. The tea partiers have been co-opted by big Republican money and don’t even know it. The Supreme Court has been taken over by ultra conservatives who have taken the ruling that corporations have the same rights as human citizens, under the guise of free speech, to the ludicrous extent that has opened the flood gates for hundreds of millions of corporate dollars, including huge foreign corporate money. This decision has resulted in the largest buy of negative and untruthful campaign adds ever in this country.
There are a lot of angry people out there. I’m one of them, I am deeply disappointed with the Obama administration and the abysmal failure of the Democratic Congress to get a lot of the things done that I had hopes for.
Does this mean that I am willing to turn the government back over to the extremists who got us here in the first place just to punish the Dems? I don’t think so!! This economic collapse is the direct result of Republican fiscal policies for the last thirty years.
Should we bite off our nose to spite our face? Should the middle class vote against their economic best interest? Do we REALLY want these corporate puppets back in control?
Briefly, this is what the Republicans want to accomplish:
Privatize Social Security by putting the only retirement money we are currently guaranteed into the hands of wall street. Is this what you want?
Eliminate Medicare so that if you get sick when you’re elderly and don’t have enough money to cover you medical needs, you suffer and die. Tough bounce, it sucks to be you! One alternative is Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa could always move in with the kids and finish out.
Eliminate the minimum wage. $7.25 is way too much! I’m sure any of these politicians could get by on half that!
Destroy what’s left of the unions so we can all depend on the largess of Large Corporate America for good wages, health care and a good retirement......Right!
Keep us in a constant armed conflict somewhere in the world in order to keep the military-industrial complex financially healthy. They could care less about the incredibly brave young people they’re sending into the meat grinder.
Continue to give tax breaks to the wealthy. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire for them would have a net effect of a 3% tax hike. Gee, do do you think they can afford it?
Deregulate the banks and wall street completely. Historically, that worked well (see the Great Depression) and currently (see our current economy).
Privatize the Veterans Administration medical care. Ask a vet how they feel about that before you throw them under the bus
Whether you’re mad at the democrats or not, if you vote for a Republican, you are voting for all of the above.
It took thirty (30) years to bring us to our economic knees. Can we realistically expect the current administration to fix it in less than two years?
The Congress was designed to work by compromise, “not my way or the highway”. The Republican party of NO and of no ideas needs to be shrunk to the size of a postage stamp until they learn the art of compromise and let our government get back to work.
Do not be fooled by their rhetoric. The strategy is to eliminate the middle class completely. These people are not your old Eisenhower Republicans.

PLAYED AGAIN!

It's been a while since I last got something off my chest so this may be a little windy but here it goes.

Do you notice any uptick in the insurance industry's anti health care reform ads? Why haven't they been blitzing the networks and cable with all sorts of future ominous results if it passes? It's not because they don't have the money. Their war chest is full. You would think the rhetoric would be at a deafening pitch. The Democrats seem to be closer than ever to passing a health care reform bill. Something just doesn't ring true here. Have the insurance companies raised enough hell to convince Americans they really are against any reform? They had me convinced. Now I wonder if it was all a grand smoke screen. Why would insurers, at this stage of the game, be attempting to raise rates on private policies anywhere from 39% to 75%? This is all over the news. What an outrage! Do these people have no sense of propriety to their own cause?! How could they be so crass at such a delicate moment? Are they stupid? Could they have worse timing?

I am suspicious that their timing is impeccable. They are definitely not stupid. What's in it for them? Why would they want health care reform? Little increased regulation for one. If the current proposal passes, insurance companies will not be able to rescind sick customers or refuse anyone insurance due to "pre-existing" conditions. That, on the face of it, would seem to be a good thing for the insured. Unfortunately, there is no cost containment language in the proposal. Sure, they will be happy to insure you but at an intentionally prohibitive rate. Breast cancer? No problem! Not until your new rates arrive in the mail. Could you afford monthly premiums twice what your house payment is? They can charge you any amount they damn well please! They will say "We didn't rescind anyone nor did we cancel any policies due to new ailments. These customers just quit paying their premiums. We were forced to cancel them. We didn't want to. Honest."

How about the 30 million people that this legislation will force to buy insurance. People who are young and/or willing to take a chance that their health will hold up for a while longer. 30 million new customers mostly young and healthy. The ideal customer! A captive clientele that won't be making any claims in the immediate future and when they do, their rates just skyrocket. If you're an insurer, why would you put up a fuss about that scenario? The perfect world! A no lose situation! The insurance industry's deafening silence belies their true intent.

The bottom line is new found prosperity for the insurance industry in a now "no risk" business and sick people will still be falling through the cracks. It is unconscionable, indefensible and near criminal!

The cure for this, and what poll after poll indicates the majority of voters want, and our politicians continue to ignore, is Medicare for all with an income based premium. If you like your current insurance, you can keep it. This is called The Public Option. It is also called COMPETITION!
And this is NO BULL.

BUSH'S SUPREME COURT PAYS OFF AGAIN

As expected, The Supreme Court rolled back any restrictions on corporate or union money spent on political advertising. If you think we've seen too many adds during elections now, you ain't seen nothin yet!

Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority wrote "Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy -- it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people -- political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence," as quoted in The Huffington Post. Justice John Paul Stevens writes in the dissent "The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case."

This goes back to the 1886 ruling Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company
(18 U.S.394) that gives corporations the same rights as people. Gore argues that, because of the 1886 decision, "the 'monopolies in commerce' that Jefferson had wanted to prohibit in the Bill of Rights were full-blown monsters, crushing competition from smaller businesses, bleeding farmers with extortionate shipping costs, and buying politicians at every level of government". Based on that ruling, the current Bush court construed this as a freedom of speech issue.

The Republicans are forever conjuring up visions of a "liberal Press" and "activist Judges". The most activist judge I can think of is Antonin Scalia! The next two are Roberts and Alito. I'll never forget old "Clueless" Chuck Schumer's response when asked how he could have voted for Alito. He said "We were duped!". Duped!? Who was duped? Unlike "Clueless" Chuck, I wasn't on the Judiciary committee to ask questions of this guy, yet I wasn't duped! Who's we, Chuck? You and the bug in your pocket? You rolled over and voted for these guys. Don't be so outraged when they make a decision that may well be responsible for you losing your job. These justices are not just conservative, they have an agenda. They seem to be bent on overturning any previous decisions that are not in line with the neocon philosophy.

If some of these yellow bellied, gutless, hair plugged and blow combed democratic worriers about getting re-elected, don't pass serious legislation to stymie this decision, they'll be out of work along with the rest of the country. Obama may as well turn over the presidency to Goldman Sachs, if he hasn't already.

CADILLAC (UNION) HEALTH INSURANCE

I'll never forget my conversation with an old pipe fitter years ago. He was reminiscing about his first days in the trade. He said "When I first went to the union hall to sign up I asked the business agent where he wanted me to work. He handed me an axe handle and a length of logging chain and said 'Go down and help those guys on the picket lines.'".

On July 20, 1934 during the Minneapolis Teamster strike, which was also supported by the trade unions, two pickets were killed and sixty seven were wounded by police gunfire.

This and other incidents like it was the start of unionism in this country. People were beaten and killed, arrested and thrown in jail and martial law was declared. It was life and death serious business.

Since that day, union members have fought for and won decent wages and benefits from employers who would rather treat them like a piece of meat.

Union wages have been responsible for an over all higher wage in this country. If it weren't for the UAW the non union workers at he auto plants in the southern states would be making much less today. Why do you think Richard Shelby, Jeff Sessions, Mitch McConnell and others from non union auto producing states, were so gleeful at the prospect of the demise of the UAW.

Now, after all the years of hard fought battles, strikes and strife, why does President Obama declare war on these hard earned benefits? "Cadillac" insurance policy is just code for union insurance policy. After all the years of support the unions have given the Democrats, this is the thanks they get? The unions worked damned hard to put this guy in office. The House Democrats better dig in on this one. A tax on those earning over $500,000 sounds much more palatable.

One thing I hear from time to time from the talking heads is "Some think the insurance companies may raise their rates if there is a tax on these policies". May raise their rates? May raise their rates to cover the tax? THEY WILL UNDOUBTEDLY RAISE THEIR RATES!! ARE YOU PEOPLE LIVING ON MARS? One of the hard and fast rules of business has always been: THE CUSTOMER ALWAYS PAYS. If not the customer, who else? This sort of idiocy makes me crazy!

It's time to end this assault on the unions and require the wealthy to pay their share!

MISERABLE THIEF

This goes to the human condition:

I try try to work out at the Y three to four times a week. This morning, when I got to my locker, I discovered that I had no lock for it. I usually keep it locked to a ring on the outside of my gym bag. After an unsuccessful search of the bag I realized that I must have left it, with the key in it, in the door of my locker the last time I worked out. I checked at the desk and no one had turned it in.

Some no good, low down, poor excuse for a human being had stolen it. A lousy $8.00 lock and key! What don't people understand about "It's not yours"? It never fails to amaze me how cheaply some will sell their souls.

KILL IT

We have watched the health care reform bill unravel before our eyes and morph into nothing more than a huge insurance company welfare program. It's now time to kill it.

As it stands, the legislation will do nothing for the forty five thousand uninsured people who are going to die in the next twelve months. Traitor Joe Lieberman's blimp sized ego and overwhelming childish desire to get even with the Democratic Party put a knife into the heart of the bill. More on Traitor Joe later.

Forty five thousand (45,000) citizens of the United States of America will die for lack of access to a doctor. We have elected a Democratic majority in the congress only for them ignore our will and throw forty five thousand of us who have the misfortune not to have health care into our graves.

These senators are so enamored with their power and influence that they will do anything it takes to stay in office. Not only can't you insult these clowns, you can't influence them unless you've got the money. I think the health care reform debacle is a perfect example. You need to look no further. This is not a political argument. It's a moral argument! Every religion I am aware of tells us to care for the less fortunate.

Then there is the cost concern. God forbid that health care would cost us some extra money. Where the hell was all this concern from either side of the isle when it came to funding these senseless wars we can't seem to get out of. It's mind boggling if you take a moment to contemplate this.

There may be some small good left in this bill but certainly not enough to offset the bad.
Rescission will still be allowed. To quote Wikipedia "In 2009, during the national debate over U.S. health care reform, rescission became popularly understood as a process by which insurance companies canceled a policyholder's insurance, sometimes after the patient was diagnosed with an expensive-to-treat illness, sometimes by claiming that the patient previously withheld information about their medical condition." The insurance company can dig out your application and go through it with a fine tooth comb. If they find any small error, say you forgot you saw your primary care doctor for a sore throat in 1982. They then cancel your policy claiming fraud. There are no cost controls on premiums. It's going to make thirty million voters mad as hell when they are forced to buy a policy or be fined.

I just don't see this thing ending up as a benefit for anyone but the insurance industry. It's time to put it out of its misery.