The Supremes miss the boat

You have got to hand it to the Supreme Court of the United States: They probably have done more damage to the country than they realize.

In two days, in my opinion (and one shared by many people), the justices in split decisions have done considerable damage to the rule of law in the United States.

Granted, I am not saying that the justices don’t have that power, because they do, and however wrong I, or anyone else, may think their reasoning and conclusions may be, what they say is how the law is supposed to be interpreted and applied in the United States. That is the compact we live under. I don’t have to like it. You don’t have to like it.

But love or hate the decisions they make we have to accept them as the new rules that govern the nation (at least until the political process can come up with a new way someway to interpret the compact that stands the scrutiny of the justices). If you don’t like that, then move to another country.

Now, having said all that, I think the Court’s rulings on both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and on “gay” marriage are faulty. Both of them for basically the same reason: They chose to redefine words with established definitions.

To some people this may not seem to be a big deal, but in the realm of the law, its rules live and die on definitions. How words are defined is established by tradition and precedent, and in both these cases the concurring justices chose essentially to say that neither tradition nor precedent was enough to warrant not changing the definitions.

Now, liberals and progressives will tell you this is as it should be because words evolve, the language evolves and over time things mean differently than they did before. Only in these cases, that really is not the situation. The justices just decided it was.

For example: the word “state” in the context of the U.S. Constitution and Congressional legislation has a pretty specific meaning that has been held for roughly 228 years. That definition is no longer valid. When legislation or regulatory rules are made now, rather than meaning just the political subdivision of US called the “state” (of which there are 50 of them), the word now means either the states (in the traditional sense) or the federal government, depending on how you want to interpret it in the political/social context.

I understand the argument that ruling the PP&ACA (Obamacare) would have adversely impacted millions of Americans and I imagine that played a significant role in the thinking of the justices. The court is loath to play bull in the china shop with the U.S. economy and usually seeks ways to avoid doing it. Of course, the court could have done as it did 30+ years ago with the bankruptcy code and stayed striking it down in Toto and told Congress it had six months to fix the problem. But that would not have served the ends of those on the liberal end of the court whose political view of the world is that role of the government is expansive and such things such as health care are a right (wrong … but that is an argument for another day).

The justices did the same thing with granting equal rights to same sex marriages.

Look, I have no problem granting two people of the same sex who wish to enter into a contractual relationship (which, legally, is all “marriage” is) and receiving government benefits equal to those granted “married” couples. No problem whatsoever. But you have to recognize that this really isn’t about people loving each other or living together; it is about those benefits. All the rest really is just window dressing.

Granted, it is an effort by a minority of our population trying legislate social acceptance of behavior which is, by any estimation, a tad bit on the abnormal side and in most cultures is considered something other than acceptable behavior. In some it may be tolerated more than others but pretty much universally it is considered aberrant.

So, the justices decided, based pretty much on a loud and orchestrated campaign of political correctness, to say that such pairings had right to be called “marriages” and were indeed a constitutional right (S0 that they had to be recognized in all 50 states). In essence, they redefined the millennia old meaning of a word in almost all cultures and religions to fit what they thought was correct in our evolving world.

The court, however, was correct in saying what is a contractual right in one state has to be in all states. So, in that sense, they did do something right.

To me, at this junction, I don’t have a dog in this fight. My objection is to the laisse faire playing with the language. Now, I know this is what lawyers and judges do all the time and it is what they get paid to do. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I see it as an assault on the rule of law, for remember the law hinges on words and how they are defined. Start changing the definitions and you tear at the foundations of the law. And if people can change definitions at will, then we become a nation of men and not law, as the old saying goes.

In one footnote, I would say that this ruling opens the door to polygamy becoming a constitutional right. You might say “nah, never happen”, but 20 years ago people were saying the same thing about gay marriage.

Personal notes and a miracle (of sorts)

For those who knew: Thank you for your kind thoughts.

For those who didn’t know: I still felt your kind thoughts.

Last week (of February 2014) was a bit of an adventure for me, involving a trip to the hospital emergency room, that morphed into a little more than a three-day hospital stay.

For those who don’t know me, I have suffered from a chronic heart condition for many years, which has included the implantation of a number of arterial stents in my coronary arteries, a rather unsuccessful attempt at coronary artery bypass graphs and chronic angina (chest pain and discomfort). It was the confluence of those conditions that compelled me to retire eight years ago.

Anyway, the last few weeks the level of my chest discomfort had increasec to the level which, at the advice of my brother (the surgeon) and my cardiologist's  physician assistant,led me to pay the visit to the emergency room at the area’s trauma care and teaching hospital, which led to yet another heart catherization (of which I have had quite enough, thank you) followed by a second catherization to install two or three (I really have not been able to keep that straight) stents (which brings me to at least 10 now) in my poor battered ticker.

The good parts of the story are a) I survived it all; b) I was able to have both my daughters visit (which is special) and c) I got rather good news, for which no one really has much an explanation.

The good news, for those who have followed my condition, is that one of those three occluded arterial bypass graphs has for some unknown reason and methodology reopened and essentially is clear now. I find this remarkable, as you see, as cardiologists in two major cardio-research hospitals had told me that it was closed and there wasn’t much that could be done about it.

The cardiologists working on me had said the new blockages in my heart (well at least one) offered them a considerable challenge since it one of them was at the junction of two arteries that already had one stent. Exactly how they solved the problem of putting a stent in this Y junction, I am not sure (even though I was essentially awake for most of the process and counting holes in the acoustical  tile in the ceiling and listening to the humorous chatter among the operation room staff).

However, I am home once again. Relatively pain-free (back to my normal level of angina discomfort that has been my companion for the last 14 years).

For those who may have said prayers for me: I thank you.

For those who say prayers for me now: I thank you.

For those who believe in these sort of things, know that I am thankful for the apparent miracle that has occurred in my body and am extremely grateful for the divine power that allowed it to happen to me.

You know, I really do think there is a God and God does have a purpose for us and takes an active role in our lives (if we let “him”). We just have to keep the faith and keep on truckin’ as the old saying goes.

Bad Republicans

The Republican conspiracy

I read this article on the Huffington Post and I about fell out of my chair laughing. Why? Because the author’s premise is so silly.

First … the Republicans. TEA Party-nics and conservatives are not Democrats or progressives. They are the opposition. You know, people who oppose you. They should be expected to do what they can to make your policies and plans fail.

Now, it doesn’t take a savant to figure out that they don’t agree with policies like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). So, if you are the elected representative of your particular area (and a majority of the people in the last election for your office voted for you) then it is pretty much a given that you represent at least some of their views and that should govern the way you vote. If your district doesn’t really like some law or policy, then it is your job to do what you can to overturn or change that policy.

The author of the article seems to think that Republicans are some terrible beasts because they don’t view the world through the same prism that he does. That is what is wrong with the world.

Reverse the shoe, say a war in Iraq. Is it not the right of the opponents of such a venture to do whatever they can to end it? It seems that was the progressives’ line just a few years ago.

Of course, they were chastised in much the same manner as the right is being assailed today. That is politics, folks.

I find it humorous to the absurd to watch various people and groups of people hammer their political opponents for their views in language that probably would have been reprehensible in my youth. However, the historian in me knows that the language of politics in the United States always has bordered on the rough and tumble.

I guess what I find most humorous is the view that everyone has to view the world through the same lens, the same philosophy, the same cultural view plate. I find it humorous, because it is so tragic and misguided that it really makes me want to despair, but I chose to laugh at my troubles rather than cry.

I wish, as Pappy used to say, I could knock some heads together in order to knock some sense into them.

People, we are all different. We all look at the world and see different visions. Depending on our experiences and cultural environment, we value different things. Some of these things we agree on the value of and others we profoundly disagree; however, the mere fact that we disagree doesn’t make us bad people.

Just because a person disagrees with you does not necessarily make that person evil … just different. Sometimes that person is evil, but it is not because they disagree with you.

The difference, as I see it, is a different view on how much responsibility the individual for his or her life. Are we, as individuals, supposed to be willing to accept the consequences of our choices? Are we supposed to be willing to accept that life is not fair and often sends adversity our way when we can ill afford it?

A lot of people say we are not. They say we are obligated to help all those less fortunate than we are. I would agree with part of that. I would say I have an personal obligation to make that choice, but that society, or the state, doesn’t not have the right to compel me to do it by force.

So to insist that anyone has a right to demand or compel another give them a good or service at a price less than they are willing to do it is, in my humble opinion, wrong. Even lifesaving medical care.

Another unfortunate aside: It seems to me that in our narcissism that seems to afflicted so many people, we seem to believe that we are supposed to live forever. Wrong answer, folks. We are mortal and every day here is a gift (that is why they call it “present”).

Sometimes, I think, in our quest for immortality, we forget that others have rights too. We forget it is not ours to demand that they forgo their rights just to our benefit. This is not to say that they can’t forgo those rights, but the choice is theirs and not ours.

Anyway, I love when progressives try to defend their demands, but it makes me want to laugh in their face when I hear them denigrate those who disagree with them. What was it Pappy used to tell me about the pot calling the kettle “black.”

Obama still doesn’t get it.

I am not responsible. I am sorry, but it was not really my fault

 

President Barack Obama gave an televised interview this week where he said he was sorry that his actions led to thousands, if not millions, losing the health care insurance policies they liked after he had repeatedly promised they wouldn’t.

See, scream the liberals, progressives and his supporters, he apologized. Now everything is hunky dory. He didn’t mean for it to happen.

Folks, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and the intentions here, it would seem obvious, were not necessarily good.

First, according to the New York Times “Mr. Obama said he had not purposely misled anyone. He said it was always his intention that no one should lose a plan he wanted to keep.”

If that was true, then the caveats and codicils that got tucked away in the law and its resulting regulations would not have made policies that administration minions decided were not good enough for people to have had to be dropped if they changed one twit after a certain date would not have been written. But they were and that was with malice aforethought. It became a way to get the insurance companies to drop current “inadequate” policies and replace them with the politically acceptable policies mandated by the administration.

IF the president didn’t know this was going to happen, then folks, he is a dolt. Either that or his staff is about the most incompetent group of yahoos that have ever worked on Pennsylvania Avenue.  It is not like years ago, people in the various executive branch departments were not saying: “Oh, yeah, and large percentages of existing policies are going to go away when we put this new stuff into effect.”

Did he just turn a deaf ear to these reports, or did his staff shield him from them? I don’t know, but in either case, he screwed up as a leader and that is what we hired him for (well, at least some of voted to hire him).

That there are a whole lot of incompetent senior executive service people still holding their jobs is really telling. The president is saying, admitting, that there is no accountability in his administration (and we thought Dubya was bad).

I hope that management and leadership programs across the nation are taking copious notes on how NOT to be a leader. Unfortunately for the United States, our president is giving a lesson in how to do that.

New Narrative: GOP moves goal posts

CNN: GOP changes demands to resolve impasse

I love politics … because it is so predictable … at least in the US.

Ok, to be out front – the way I see it – the shutdown could be ended today if the SENATE would pass the funding resolutions in its current hopper.

That won’t happen because the SENATE is holding out for one big omnibus continuing resolution to fund ALL government operations. It is either the omnibus spending bill or no bill – the so-called “clean CR” – according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and President Barack Obama.

However, I am seeing others starting to pick up on the point of view that what the House of Representatives is doing is IN FACT just what those silly dead white men 225 years ago wanted it to do in cases like this when they wrote the U.S. Constitution. This is exactly what those evil “framers” or “founders” of our government expected and wanted the House to do. It is performing its role as a check on the Senate and the Executive Branch (the president) by exercising its power over the purse.

Now, there are those, mainly progressives, who see this as a bad thing (although they were busy trying to defund military operations in Iraq just a few years ago), but it really is what people like James Madison and the others who sweated the summer of 1787 out in Philadelphia to contrive a more perfect union meant to happen.

What those less than three-score of gentlemen did really is quite remarkable, when  you look at the diversity (yes, Virginia, they were a diverse cultural lot) of the group and the interests that they represented.

It indeed was a grand compromise, that no one went home 100 percent satisfied with the result (the biggest rift was over the institution of slavery), but it still put in place a formula for governance that pretty well stood the test of time … until we all got complacent about it and for reasons discussed very well by the guru at Strafor (George Friedman) we have let ideologues grab the wheels of power.

(The roots of how we got here)

Still and yet, the government is functioning pretty much within normal designed operating parameters – despite the rather bizarre rhetoric and talking points being distributed by the leadership of the Democrat Party and its supporters.

As I told one person today, it ain’t time to man the barricades just yet.  Her concerns are well grounded, I told her, and not all people are quite as tolerant and generous as she might be but while we may be in the latter stages of the infamous “Cycle of Democracy”, there always is hope. Hope does spring eternal, despite what we might think in moments of despair as we watch/hear/read the news each day from various sources competing to get us to accept their view of world affairs.

That most of them – at least all those people who talk at us via the TV and Internet these days as well as those who we have elected to lead the government - really are being disingenuous (being charitable here) is most distressing and, as Pappy used to say, you just want to knock some heads together to knock some sense in them.

Does it not seem strange that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting can get a chunk of money (some $445 million) while the $100,000 that supposedly goes to the survivors of American service members killed in the line of duty (roughly two dozen since Oct. 1, including four killed in action in Afghanistan) has been suspended because the government can’t afford it?

Or how about a rally on the National Mall by supporters of amnesty for people who have entered the United States without the proper documentation or have overstayed the visits they said they were going to have when groups of aged veterans from World War II are denied access to the open-air memorial on the same mall and threatened with arrest if they come back?

How about people being denied access to their privately owned homes and businesses that happen to have ended up on property owned by the federal government in the creation of various national parks?

Or the National Institutes of Health enrolling a half-dozen or so sick children in special treatment programs even though they have been forbidden to do so by the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office Building next to the White House?

If that does not sound to you like misplaced priorities, then I would question whether you should reexamine those priorities. I definitely think there is some serious misrepresentation of issues going on here.

And no, the federal government is not going to default on its debt payments, unless someone in the executive branch really screws things up.

A) Under existing funding legislation (and that already passed by the House) funds are available to pay the interest on the national debt … hence, no need for a default because that is what is required. It is when you don’t make those payments that you default. It is a bit like paying your mortgage (even in the worst of times, if all you can do is pay the interest portion, the lender probably will not give you too much of a bad time).

B) The federal government does not need to raise the debt ceiling in order to make these payments, because it takes in enough money in taxes, tariffs, duties, etc., to cover the interest due along with a whole bunch of other things.

The debt ceiling debate is sort of like arguing over which credit cards you are going to try to pay this month, with one side let’s just raise the credit limit and the other side saying that it might be a good idea to start cut back on how much we are spending.

Unfortunately, what we are being treated to daily by those we have hired to run our government is a whole lot less than the truth and a whole lot of stuff to try to scare us into demanding that one political party’s viewpoint is the only acceptable one.

I don’t think so.

But that is enough of my random thoughts for this go around.

Nuff said.

Medicaid: One size fits all?

Ryan plan sparks Medicaid debate

Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin representative/Republican vice presidential nominee, has brought up a good topic for debate: Should the states or the federal government administrate the Medicaid programs that pay for health care for the poor and the indigent.

That is a good question.

Is it better that the states decide the extent of the Medicaid program and who it helps or doesn’t help, or should that decision be a decision made by Congress, or a federal regulatory agency like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services/Health Care Financing Administration?   Who is the CMMS/HCFA?

Most democratic-socialists will tell you that it needs to be a national program, while most federal-republicans will tell you it needs to be in the hands of the state governments which lie closer to the people. Where you fall out in that debate is the choice you have to make according to what you see the role of government being at each level.

I, for one, tend toward the traditional democratic-republican view point of Thomas Jefferson, even though I dearly love James Madison (and he is one of my personal heroes – even if this is the 100^th year of his disastrous War of 1812 when he shouldn’t have tried to play commander in chief in the field, but that is a whole other story), that government works best when it is closest to the people. In other words, the lower the level of government, the better it works for the benefit of the people.

This is especially true for communities. Communities and their governments, usually municipal or county/parish governments are far more responsive to the needs and desires of their constituents than state governments … and far more responsive than the federal government in Washington. This usually is because the constituents are neighbors to the people running the schools and city halls and let them know their views on their front lawns or over their back fences.

State governments, for similar reasons, usually are little more responsive to the needs of their states than the federal government, but that is partially by design … or malice aforethought, as I put it. Still, state governments can be more reflective and responsive to the demographic makeup and desires of its communities, something that is difficult, if not impossible, at the national/federal government level.

At the national level, in order to avoid being quite arbitrary and capricious in its law and rule making, the government must, basically, make everything “one size fits all.” That, I contend, is a recipe for disaster because problems come in all shapes and sizes and one size definitely doesn’t fit all.

The plan, by those really smart guys way back when, was for each state to be sort of a laboratory of solutions. Each state would try to solve the problems facing its residents, which may or may not be the same or even similar to the ones facing another state. Great idea, but the revolution in telecommunications may have doomed it.

Today, whether it is the Internet or television over cable and satellite, communications are nearly instantaneous, with all problems that are associated with information overload.

One of the complaints in the above article is that advocates for the poor don’t have the resources to go to 50 state capitals to make their cases for greater benefits for the poor and find it much more efficient to take their lobbying to just one place: Washington. But is that not the problem with our national government? Isn’t in the pockets of too many special interests and not looking out for the “general welfare” of the nation?

Of course, the problem with having 51 solutions instead of 1 solution is that it is time consuming and Americans are a notoriously impatient lot. We want our problems solved yesterday, if not sooner, and we don’t like debating over what ought to be done. Just do something, do it now, and make the problem/distraction go away. No need discussing it. No need to come to any compromises. Just do what I want and do it now.

Except sometimes what gets done isn’t what I want, or what my neighbors want, or what might work in some other place but isn’t going to work too well here. Hmmm. Maybe there is a better answer.

As I have said before, government governs best when it governs least, and the best way for that to happen is to leave in the hands of the level of government closest to the people.

Don’t look for that to happen anytime soon, however; the special interests in Washington have no interest in having to work any harder for their causes than they have to.

Real World

Example of the progressives'' mindset: Dumb and Dumber

 

The author of the linked article is a professor of linguistics out in California and he makes a plea to his fellow Democrats and progressives to use the language carefully or the plebeians might catch on that they are being talked down to.

To me, that is one of the problems with the so-called liberals and progressives: They tend to talk down to people they disagree with. You see, according to the above article, the problem with “low-information voters” (which probably includes the vast majority of voters) is they are not voting for what is in their material interest sometimes, but what feels right in their gut. This supposedly explains why sometimes people who are not filthy, obscenely rich sometimes vote against the liberals and for the conservatives, who usually are Republicans and not Democrats.

Now, these dumb people, who don’t know what is in their own interest, for their own good and obviously in the national interest, need to be courted, but unfortunately they are smart enough to know when someone is calling them dumb … and the professor points out they have figured out that calling them a “LIV” essentially is calling them dumb. Bad move.

Ok, what is the problem here? The problem is an entire mindset. There is a mindset that thinks that if a person has a certain background, a certain religious preference, looks a certain way, talks a certain way, then obviously they are too stupid … oops, silly, and dumb (which really means mute, but we are using it colloquially) and need to have those who are more educated, let’s say, more cosmopolitan, more learned, make all the important decisions for them. The implication is that they are too dumb to do what is “right” and they cling to their “bibles and guns.”

Sorry, wrong answer. I may not be the brightest bulb in the pack, but I long ago figured out not to put someone down because they don’t have some piece of paper or haven’t been to as much schooling as I have. Now, that, I contend, is really dumb.

For example, I don’t think anyone of my Canadian in-laws have more than a high school diploma (at best, and I know some don’t even come close) and yet, they can do things that leave me in the dust. Oh, sometimes I can bluff my way into maybe making them think I have a clue what they are talking about, but with my college degrees and 40 years of white collar jobs … I am almost always faking it. I do know a little, but that is because I was a journalist and when you are general journalist, you have to learn a little about a whole lot of subjects … as I say, you know enough to get yourself in really deep trouble (because others think you know what you are talking about).

Still, at least one of them has made (and lost and made) more money than I can ever dream of making. Another, well, he is smart as a whip (like his sister) and can figure out how to make things work that leave me totally baffled.

I have worked with people like that all my life. Just because someone has a college degree, or a professional degree, or seems to have a higher intelligence quotient than somebody else, it never makes them better. I have seen high school graduates who were better wordsmiths than people who had masters’ degrees and doctorates from prestigious universities.

I look out at the world today and I see far too many people dismissing others because of what they think they don’t have. Smart is not a piece of paper. Smart is not necessarily a lot of money. Smart can be a lot of things.

It is the reason that I try (and I admit, I am no more a success at this than probably the next man, but I do try) to treat each and every person I meet with the dignity and respect that I hope they will treat me. I don’t make fun of their accents, or their dress, or how much they weigh (like I should talk). I try to accept their lifestyles, even when I disagree with them. I sure as heck don’t try to say to them “Do as I tell you to do!”

I might try to convince them that maybe I have a better idea, but if they don’t agree … well, not much I can do about that.

It is sort of like the linked article. It seems to assume that conservatives and those who disagree with progressive premises are somehow on the lower end of the evolutionary scale. Well, I don’t agree, and I would hope that they would agree to disagree civilly.

I know my old progressive classmate out west probably thinks I am a lost cause, but as I keep trying to tell him: I just look at the world through a different prism. He ought to try it sometime.

But then, I do try to do so too … much to the frustration of my dear sweet wife when I get in to mode and start trying to argue things from what I perceive to be “their” perspective. It is great fun as an intellectual exercise, but it keeps me on my toes.

Still, my advice to people out there: Go with your gut. It almost never fails you. Be true to what you believe and at least you will have stood for something. That is all we can do.

Tax increases

Backgrounder:

http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/15/12753063-can-us-economy-tolerate-a-tax-increase-in-2013?lite

Big debate in Congress, should the tax rates enacted during the first term of the George W. Bush administration be allowed to expire? Should they only be extended for those people whose annual income is less than $250,000 per year? Good question.

However, the way it is portrayed is that the extention of these tax rates is a cut for the wealthy (not that the people who are poor are apparently unaffected, as President Barack Obama is claiming that the cuts need to remain for those of lower income) really is somewhat hiding the fact, as pointed out in the third from the last paragraph that these same people (those over $250K/annum) are going to get hit with a $2 Billion to $4 Billion increase in the taxes per year for the next 10 years starting on January 1, 2013.

So, if I read this right, they are supposed to sit still for two increases in the taxes on their incomes … and we are supposed to see that as fair. I guess that is fair only if you resent the fact that someone makes more money than you. I, for one, don’t, but that is just me.

It really has bothered me how the President and the progressives have done so much to demonize those people who make over $250K. I am sorry, but I was taught that jealousy was a bad thing … and to be vindictive was even worse. Pappy, Mom, I am sorry but your youngest son is having a hard time trying to accept that others don’t live by the golden rule. Not the rule that says “If you have the gold, you rule.” The other one: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Of course, the first one is true, and always has been, but it doesn’t mean we can’t strive to do the other. It seems in this country, I am sad to say (at least as far as some people seem to be saying), that we must covet what others’ have because it was not fair for them to have it. Where did we get that?

I guess it comes from the misguided notion that we, as a society, owe it to others to provide for their needs (regardless of their efforts) while we provide our best efforts to maximize our abilities. Hell, I know that there are unfortunate people out there. Heck, I have been one of them, but that doesn’t mean that I owe them my brains or my labor. That is mine … and I can sell it, give it, or not, but that is my choice and not society’s.

Now, I could say that I owed society a debt … but you know something, I think I have paid that debt several times over. I did serve my community and nation for more than 20 years. I didn’t do it because it was convenient. I didn’t do it because it was popular. I did it, mostly, so if I had to be cannon-fodder, at least I would be TRAINED cannon-fodder and might know enough on the battlefield to stay alive, if not in one piece. And why did I feel I might be cannon-fodder? Well, a) because war is a condition that will not go away and if you think so, then you have been hiding under a rock your whole life, and b) I felt an obligation, as part of my community, to be willing to rise to not only my own defense but also that of my city, county, state and nation. I am not saying that I was all that self-sacrificing, because I did feel it was in my own enlightened self-interest along the way.

But what bothers me is to see people expect others to do a job that they should be doing for themselves. I mean, however you call it, a lot of the time that “service above self” thing I have atop my blog is really about self-interest.

My point? If we really want to be fair, then we have to agree that voting ourselves money out of the federal treasury is really a bad idea and maybe we should stop doing it.

We need to stop playing games with the tax codes. We need to stop punishing this group because we think they got an unfair advantage and helping or rewarding this other group because … you fill in the reason.

Unfortunately, we have a president and his cohort of advisors who seem to think that the best way to win your vote is to make a big deal about how much a person is worth. Personally, I could give a damn. Unless they can prove he broke the law (I bet they can’t) or if any of the other people who have lots of money but are not on the BFF list, then they should just shut up. It isn’t really relevant.

But no, in America today, it seems that the call to arms is going out. People, rise up! Rise up and STRIKE! Take what you want from those more fortunate than you and the government will help you. Strike those people who believe in the intrinsic value of the individual! Strike at those who think they own their own labor! Strike at those who you don’t like because of some ancient grievance! STRIKE and STRIKE HARD! STRIKE NOW BEFORE THEY CAN ENSLAVE YOU AND MAKE YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN LIFE!

Well, as I said before and I will say again: I regret the world I am leaving to my grandchildren. It apparently will not be as nice a place  in which – even with all the bad times – I have enjoyed the life I have lived. I wish I could do better, but – ALAS – I fear not.

FOOTNOTE – I don’t make $250K. Never have, never will and never even came close.

UPDATE

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/16/democrats-open-door-to-letting-taxes-rise-in-2013-to-reset-debate-with-gop/

You know, I think the Democrats have a point: Let's raise taxes on everybody ... at least that is fair. It is not what they are saying, but the impact is the same. They are just trying to pander to one group to pressure their opponents into doing what they want, which is blatantly discriminatory.

Canadian health care

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Investigators+sift+through+debris+field+Saskatchewan+plane/6618024/story.html

Ok, this will be short and sweet.

Yes, I know the above story is taking things to the extreme, but it is not all that far out of the ordinary. Judging from the stories told to me by my Canadian brethren, while not that extreme, long waits (and occasional deaths) are the norm rather than the exception in Canadian hospitals. This is what you get with a single-payer, government-run healthcare system. You hear of similar stories from Britain’s NHS.

This is not to say that when you DO get treated that you do not get top-notch care, usually. Although, if it is anything out of the normal, you have to expect not to be treated locally but referred to the specialty centers in places like London, Ontario, or Toronto (at least in Ontario, I am not all that familiar with the other provinces). Those referrals often take months and not days.

So, if you want that style of medical care, which you will pay for through taxes (just as the Canadians do), then I guess there is nothing I can do to dissuade you.

Does THIS Congress have better business?

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/11/politics/health-care-fatigue/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26207.html

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/11/politics/house-health-care/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/11/house-approves-obamacare-repeal-in-first-vote-since-court-ruling/

Does THIS Congress have better business?

You know something about the vote in the US House of Representatives to repeal the Affordable Care Act? IT WAS pure political theater. Yup, it sure was … and it ain’t gonna pass in the Senate and even if it did, President Obama would have vetoed it … and there definitely are not enough votes in either the Senate or the House to override a veto.

Am I upset … not on your life. You see, I look at Congress much the way a New York judge looked at the legislature in a ruling he made in the mid-19^th Century:

“No man's life, liberty, or property, are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Thank you, Judge Gideon J. Tucker, for pointing out what has been obvious to me for many years. You see, I would rather see the legislature (in this case, substitute Congress) doing something they know won’t make it in to law, than pass something just for the sake of passing something in to law.

So, could the Congress has spent its time better? Probably. But would have it? Doubtful, from my humble perspective … at least not this Congress and not this presidential administration.

Ironically, Americans seemed to sense this for many years when they kept the executive and legislative branches gridlocked. You see, when you are gridlocked, then little gets done and the less done usually means less damage to individual freedom. The less the federal government finds to meddle in, I contend, the better off us lowly citizens are.

But I know that isn’t very progressive of me … and to those who wish I was … well, look at this way, I want you to have the freedom to do what you want … I just don’t want to pay for it or have you shove it down my throat.

Anyway, keep it up Congress. I am rooting for gridlock.

In re: Medical care

Background story

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48066135/ns/health-health_care/

The problem in the United States and health care is more a matter of perception than reality. If you read the above story, pay attention to the very last sentence … it is very telling,

You see, when it comes right down to it, as my dear wife pointed out to me, we have very good care in the US … very good. And she should know as she has had experience with both the Canadian government-provided health system and the US non-government provided system.

From her viewpoint, the difference, to put it my words, is that the US has a Cadillac system while Canada has a very reliable Ford or Chevrolet system. Both systems provide good care on the basic hospital stay … only in the US you might have your own TV set in a semi-private room and not necessarily want to leave right away, while in Canada you would have to rent a TV and be in a six-bed ward and you definitely want to escape as soon as possible. The beds, she says, are more comfortable the US than in Canada and the nursing staff much more responsive to the call button at each bed in the US.

SO, while you still would get excellent treatment, for the most part, you get more bang for your stay with the US system than Canada’s.

Another thing I have noticed, and it is an extension of our third-party payer system, is that when you leave the hospital they usually hand you the drugs you need to survive for a few days, with a prescription to get more if you need it. In Canada, they just hand you the prescriptions and the visit to the drug store is not covered (unless you have an employer-supplied private health insurance program).

So, a lot of the health care debate, renewed by the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act (which is anything but, in my humble opinion), has never been about the care or cost, as much as who pays. In the story above, the woman delayed getting care because she didn’t have insurance and wanted to wait until the government-provided Medicare would pay for it. It almost cost her life, but she had been convinced by the doomsayers that they hospital wouldn’t do the operation unless she was insured. That, for the most part, is bovine scatology, especially when a person’s life at risk. Now, if it is elective surgery, non-life critical, well that is a different matter and should be.

In almost all cases, including my own, even when coverage was in doubt, the hospital usually will go ahead and do the treatment in life-saving cases … and then sort out who pays what and how much later. And a lot of the time, if you are poor or indigent, then some group or even the hospital will figure out a way to get the bill paid. In my case, I was out doing a stupid thing far from my home with minimal health insurance (and the insurance card was still at the office – unissued) when I had a very major heart attack. I could go into the long song and dance about that, but it really is irrelevant.

It will take time, and I suspect it will involve a modicum of stress, but paying the bills will get sorted out. Of course, looking at the initial bill usually is enough to make your heart want to stop beating, but that is how much medical care costs. It ain’t cheap, not if you want decent care with the providers getting a decent return on their efforts.

Unfortunately, we have somewhat demonized healthcare providers as being greedy and especially the relatively recent innovation of third-party payers who will pool your premiums with others folks to provide a fund for those who need to pay bills. That practice is only about 75 years old.

Now, it seems, we don’t want people who provide this service to get a reward for their trouble of doing it … or we don’t like the type of return they are getting, especially if they are really trying to be careful stewards of the money given them in premiums … read that contract closely, because they are going to go strictly by it or be accused of malfeasance or other fiscal crimes.

Again, unfortunately, there are those in the US who think the federal government can be a better steward than private organizations. What are these people thinking? How many government contracting scandals do you have to have? How many cases of fraud, etc., do you have to have before you realize that the government is not really the best steward of your money? At least the private insurance companies do have some incentive (rather than just altruism) to keep costs down … it is they get to keep some.

Yes, it would be better if we had more companies competing for our consumer business than less, but that is a product of our government regulation, which is more designed to protect and defend existing industries than it is just make sure that people are treated equally before the law in the contracts that they subscribe to.

That is the biggest complaint, at least mine, about especially today’s federal government: It is too busy picking winners and losers in the commercial world and not just making sure everybody just abides by the contracts that they sign. If you don’t think this is true, then just look at the Defense Department contracts and how money is spent there. Understand, I love the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard (and all their reserve formations), but I have personally witnessed too much avarice and stupidity on the part of the bureaucracies that run their contracting systems and seen how much Congress meddles and muddles the whole process not realize that there is a lot fuzzy business going on. Plus, I am too much of a historian not to realize that corruption in government contracting not only is as American as apple pie, but it a basic theme throughout human history.

How can we expect health care to be any different?

Update on my progressive friend

 

He thinks the profit motive should be removed from medicine … ok … I can accept that … but how in the heck does he plan to pay for all this stuff?

In typical progressive fashion, rather than have doctors and hospitals compete, they should pool their resources. In this case, I guess since doctors and hospitals are not smart enough to figure out what is in their own best interest, the government should insist on it …like government employees or elected officials are any smarter than doctors and hospital administrators?

He points out that the US is the only major industrial country that doesn’t offer some form of universal health care sponsored by the government. Does that mean we are supposed to follow all our industrialized friends off that cliff?

Hello, has anyone looked at what is happening in Europe or Canada lately? I mean our industrialized friends seem to be having a rather bad case of the financial woes … and most of it stems from borrowing to give people something that they “can’t afford”.

Now, I know it appears that profit would be an anathema to my friend, but maybe the profit motive ain’t such a bad thing. But then he is a corporate executive, so I suppose that profit matters to him … just it shouldn’t apply to others. Ok, I am being unfair to him here. I apologize.

Of course, the first thing he throws up is taking care of our elderly who are infirm … but wait a minute. They are not the people who are uninsured. They have Medicare … oh yeah, and it doesn’t have any financial problems at all … and what about all those doctors and clinics that refuse to see new Medicate patients because their costs exceed what the federal and state governments will reimburse them for. I mean the Federal Health Financing Commission is absolutely famous for over-compensating health care providers all over the US. (Don’t throw up the fraud strawman; that is an entirely different issue). How do I know this, we won’t go into how many times I wrote about health care issues during my career as a print journalist, trying to understand and explain how the health care financing system works in the US. After nearly 40 years of studying the problem, I have come to the conclusion that the federal government is toxic when it comes to this issue and state governments (at least in the states where I had to cover the doings of various and sundry hospital boards) are not that far behind.

The poor also are covered … it is called Medicaid …and in some states you don’t have to be “poor” to qualify … at least as the federal government decides to define the “poverty line”. No, you and your family can, in some states, make two or three times as much as the poverty line and still qualify for Medicaid. Am I missing something here, or is the definition of poverty in this country seriously out whack? I contend that is another issue we really need to take a look at. And Medicaid, like Medicare, is unsustainable as it is now structured.

Ok, who are these millions of uninsured … by process of elimination we are talking mainly about a lot of 20- and 30-somethings who are gaming the system since they normally are pretty healthy that they won’t need health care, so providing themselves with some form of insurance is not a priority. Ok, whose fault is that? Now, after not paying to some third party to cover them, they want those third parties to have to accept them? I am sorry, but that doesn’t sound fair to me.

Ok, so their employer doesn’t offer health insurance, or offers a high deductible insurance plan (been there, done that, lost the T-shirt), does not the individual have the right to sell their talents elsewhere? Is that not their choice?

People, the US was made on choices. It is the basis on which our society, freedoms and government stand on the principle that individuals have the right to make their own choices. And if you haven’t noticed, they also have the right to suffer the consequences of their choices. We don’t have the right to take that right away from them; however we may disagree with it.

But the progressives want to do just that. They think they know better. But, I am sorry, but they are wrong. Of course, I could be wrong, but if anybody comes up with a way for the concept “from each according to their (limited) abilities, and to each according to their (insatiable) needs” to really work, short of a gun in your face and you becoming at minimum an indentured servant, if not an outright slave, let me know … because it ain’t gonna happen.

It all boils down to you have to make it in the self-interest of people to do what society wants. Now, there are two ways to make that happen: You can throw the fear of God into them or you can make it rewarding to them. Fear only works on the short-term until people get fed up and start to fight back. Rewards (profits) really do work. We have seen it all through history, but some people just don’t want to acknowledge that.

Now, I admit, all rewards are not “fair” or “equal” but guess what: Life ain’t fair and no one is “equal” (nor should they be, except before the law. There, they do have the right to expect that the “law” will treat them just like any other citizen – Pollyannaish view I admit, but it works better than from each/to each)

Another thing about profits: What profits one person will not be seen as a profit to another … it all depends on their point of view and what motivates that individual person.

Now, we could let people fail … and maybe learn from their mistakes (however costly that that might be) or we can insulate people from their mistakes (and hope they learn). For example, my wife calls people who ride motorcycles “organ donors” (especially if they don’t wear helmets), but does that mean for safety’s sake we should ban all motorcycles because of the dire consequences from an accident? Sorry, but in my usual phrase, that dog don’t hunt. People do have the right to be stupid.

Still there are those who will argue that health is an issue that cannot be allowed to be left to the choice of the individual. It is too important, they say. My question is who set those people up as God and who says people involved in the health care industry (and not matter how you slice it, it is an industry providing goods and services to consumers) are gods. Doctors don’t always know the answer and that medicine isn’t going to always work … and that is the dying truth, I swear.

So, if the individual is not responsible for his or her actions (or non-action) and the subsequent consequences to themselves, then who the heck is responsible? If you say society has an obligation to make people secure in their health, then I will remind you what Ben Franklin (another bright guy) is quoted as saying.”Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Your health is merely temporary, and, no, we won’t live forever. Everyone’s health will go south … that, like taxes, is a given.

How do progressives believe this stuff?

A very progressive friend of mine (well, we used to debate all the time back in high school, some 45 years ago) is dancing in the streets that the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) was held constitutional … even it meant as a tax.

Among the examples of why it is right for the country he cites that among his many other talents, he was once an RN, administrator and educator (now he is COO for a computer game software company) is that experience gave him the view that the American health care system is broken, because he was always broke (that is if I understood his Facebook comment correctly, which I might not have).

My question would be: Why was he always broke and does that mean the health care system is broke? Furthermore, when we are talking about health care, exactly what does it mean?

What is health care? Is it the treatment and care for medical issues or is it the way that treatment and care is paid for? Those are two separate issues and quite distinct from one another.

This debate got my dear sweet wife (who is a Canadian national) and me in an interesting discussion of the Canadian system. For those who don’t know, it is a single-payer system for hospitalization, but significant chunks are not covered (like drugs and other things like certain tests, etc.). And what is covered is breaking the banking in the provinces (except maybe Alberta but they have so much oil in the ground, who cares). She is the first one to point out that the Canadian health care system is not “free”. Nope, people in Canada not only pay a sales tax to the province (the PST) they are in but also to the federal government in Ottawa (The GST). It is like 13 per cent right now, since they merged the two levies so people wouldn’t notice who was getting what and it would be uniform across Canada (The HST).

Now, Canada had a problem, according to my wife, about 15 years ago with the costs of health care going through the roof. The Solution: Cap the pay doctors could get. Now, the problem is that they don’t have enough doctors to go around. Funny, give people less incentive to do something and they stop doing it.

Now, how does this pertain to what is happening in the US? Well, the problem in the US is not so much health care per se, but how are we going to pay for it. That is what the debate is all about. I know we all went through this in 2010, but the court ruling has once again brought it back to the forefront.

Now, the question arises: Whose responsibility is it to pay these bills? The individual? Private charities? The employer? An insurance company? The state government? The federal government?

Therein lies the rub; we can’t make up our minds.

In our federal republic, is it truly the role of the federal government to ensure that everyone can pay for the health care they need? Well, I don’t think so, but the people who think like me have been outvoted by those in Congress, so I have to accept the majority’s decision that it does.

Now, let me dispose of one fallacy: Health care is not a “right”; nor is housing, transportation, food, clothing or a job. Sorry, but those are not rights. Rights are things that are not handed out by governments, rights are those things that we are endowed with by “our Creator” (to quote Thomas Jefferson, who was a very bright man). As he would put it, our rights are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. You can’t buy and sell those. They are just there.

Now, one can make an argument that we do have a right to own property, particularly our own labor, which we have the right to buy and sell as we wish. Radical notion there, but I tend to agree with it. Not all cultures and societies agree with that notion, but it is one that basically underpins the American one. We all have the right to own property. We all have the right to own our own labor (id est: that means we can’t be held as slaves) and we have the right to negotiate to benefit from that labor.

As with all rights, we have corollary responsibilities. Sort of like, if you have good you have to evil, or how else would we know what good means.

If we have life, then we have to give life. In other words, if we have the right to live our lives, then we have to be willing to let others have the right to live their lives as they see fit, with each of us being willing to accept the consequences of our own actions and not necessarily expecting someone to pick us up if we fall (We will leave that choice to someone else). If we have the liberty to do something, then we have to give others the liberty to do things differently. If we have the right to pursue our own vision of happiness, then we have to be willing to let others have the right pursue their visions, even if we disagree with them.

Of course, there is one limitation on any right and that is what we do as individuals must not infringe on the ability of others to exercise their same rights

Pappy taught me that individuals have the right to be stupid. We don’t have to like that, but they do. Only thing is, if you are stupid, then you have to pay the consequences of being stupid, or foolish, or silly … or whatever.

My friend posted a picture on his Facebook comment from the Elect Obama site, of a woman holding a sign that says: I am Obamacare and then going on to outline her various medical conditions she recently found out about and couldn’t find anyone else to pay for. Now, this woman says she is 34 years old. That means she has been an adult for 16 years (according to US law, when you are 18 you are considered an adult and therefore responsible for her own actions). As a responsible adult, what has she been doing to protect herself on the day the inevitable happens? Ah, nothing? Hello, does everybody remember the old fable about the grasshopper and the ant? This person qualifies as a grasshopper.

Ok, the question is fellow ants (adults): Do we let the grasshopper die or can our federal government require us to help her? Actually, that is not the question. We could voluntarily choose to help her, but Obamacare makes it mandatory that we help her. So, is it right and proper to make us help this woman (multiply it by millions of other grasshoppers) or should she be asked to a) face the unfortunate consequences of her own inaction or b) find willing ants to help her? I would say the latter.

I am not being hard-hearted here. Heck, if I knew the lady, I probably would chip in to help her, but I don’t think it is the government’s job to tell me that I have to. I think that is part of liberty for us to make that choice.

The problem is that when you remove consequences, then you remove achievements. In other words, you can’t have good without evil. You can’t have encouragement, without the corollary discouragement. You can’t have incentive without disincentive.

Any person familiar with human behavior will tell you that you get a lot more out of positive rewards than you do negative punishments. Granted, fear of punishment or retribution is not a bad incentive, but things work so much better when people think they might get a reward if they do “good”.

Obamacare is an effort to remove those negative rewards and as a result it also eliminates rewards for positive behavior. That, I contend, is a very bad idea.

Besides, it doesn’t really work.  Take away incentives and rewards and we all fall back on the default position: Let somebody else do it, it ain’t in my job description.

One final point: Demand is unlimited, supply is limited. No matter how you slice it, there will never be enough health care to meet demand. It just isn’t going to happen. That means it has to be rationed and that rationing will be done through access. The only two ways that access can be rationed is by waiting times or by financial incentives.

As my brother, the surgeon, once told me: Americans long ago voted their pocketbooks on this issue and that is the health care system we have. Financial incentives win over waiting times. Oh, and guess what? Canada is mulling going back to allowing private health care alternatives to the government supplied system … one where the individual can pay extra not to have to wait for treatment or care.

Obamacare ruling

My initial reaction is the Chief Justice John Roberts probably just handed the Republicans the White House and possibly the Senate.

Why? 

First: He defined the individual mandate as a TAX, which it is. Even if the Obama Administration and the Congressional Democrats want to try to deny it, now they can’t. How they are going to run away from that is beyond me.

Second: By upholding the law, Roberts put the onus back where it properly belongs: On CONGRESS. It is up to Congress to realize it is crappy law and change it.

Third: The decision puts a brake on using the “commerce clause” to justify everything. That is a good thing.

Fourth: The decision tells Congress that it can’t just threaten to withhold funds if the states don’t do its bidding. HOORAY. Too many federal mandates have been forced on the states that way.

Fifth: Most people, at least according to opinion polls, think the Affordable Care Act goes way beyond what they want. This just pisses them off. Pissed off voters usually vote, and rarely do they vote for the incumbent  or the party in power. So by handing down a decision that narrowly tailors the constitutionality of the legislation, Roberts, and the four liberals, have done the country a service by pissing off the majority.

Now, that may not be what happens, but that is my initial reaction, for what it is worth.

More Random thoughts

I peruse a lot of different news sites (rather than watch TV, I prefer to read my news … I guess that is a holdover from being a print journalist for so many years.  Anyway, even the web news sources have me shaking my head these days. It is bizarre, no matter what the slant of the purveyor.

1. I regularly visit the Huffington Post, and get amazed at some of the things that the limousine liberal (I am sorry, the progressives) set gets jacked up about. One of the more recent is a headline that some evil billionaire is going to launch an “vicious” ad campaign against President Obama.

First, since when is this any different that say the slams against Mitt Romney or George W. Bush? I mean, give me a break.

Second, obviously these people have not studied much American history … if you think politics is dirty now, you really need to go back and look at want passed for political dialogue in the late 17oos and all through the 1800s in this country. You will be surprised at what was said about various political figures and candidates.

So, some rich guy (that you don’t agree with) is going to spend a bunch of his wealth to tear down a political opponent. You have a problem with that? You need to have a reality check. Stop and think about what the “freedom of speech” really means and it means having to put up with idiots you don’t agree with having the freedom to spend their own money (regardless of how they came by it) to say things that you don’t like. Sorry, that is the price of liberty and having a freedom to speak our minds.

2. There is some veteran of Iraq (he is like a 27-year-old student now) who is going to take his medals from serving in the so-called “Global War on Terrorism” and try to give them back to President Obama at the NATO summit in Chicago later this month to protest, as I gathered from the story, the war in Iraq and the continuing war in Afghanistan. What a hoot. I am sorry, he has got every right to do it, but so what … as far as I am concerned (unlike MSNBC) it really is a non-story. First, we pulled out of Iraq, remember? What happens there, now, is their problem, not ours, nor is it the US’s responsibility if they can’t get their act straight. Sorry, that dog won’t hunt. Second, we will skedaddle from Afghanistan soon enough, just wait and see. (Don’t know the definition of skedaddle, look it up, particularly as it was used in the American Civil War – oops, I am sorry, the War of Northern Aggression – contexts)

3. It is really getting hard to condemn that Hispanic guy down in Florida who shot a young Afro-American that got everybody is such a tizzy.  According to the medical reports being leaked, the Hispanic guy had injuries consistent with getting the fecal material beat out of you, and the Afro kid had scrapes and bruises on his knuckles consistent with some who was knocking the crap out of someone … in addition to the bullet hole in him. Granted, I think both young men some pretty lousy decisions that fateful night, but if I had a broken nose and had my head slammed against the ground at least twice, hard enough to break the skin and start me bleeding, and the guy who did it looked like he was coming back to give me more, I am not sure I wouldn’t use Mister Colt’s equalizer. And that is regardless if I had been wondering what the heck the person was doing in my neighborhood late at night. I am not sure I would have been as obvious about following him, but hey … I am a devout coward at heart.

4. I see where the progressives are up in arms that the Republicans don’t have a plan ready to replace Obamacare if it gets struck down or repealed. Like, they have to replace it? Since when.

Ok, health care financing is a mess in the US, but then it is just about everywhere else. We choose to ration health care (a limited resource no matter where you go) by limiting access to those who either have sense enough to figure out how to get insurance (which is not the be-all panacea that some think it is, but that is another story). In Canada, they ration health care in their own way. It is called time. You have a health problem … be prepared to stand and wait until the limited number of health facilities and personnel have time to see you.

Now, I am sorry, but unlike other nations, like our European friends, providing health care is not some right that is required of government. Sorry, that dog doesn’t hunt either. Somebody has to pay for it and that is a fact. In Canada, they used taxes, like a 15 percent (I think it is 15 percent) national/provincial sales tax on just about everything. That is in addition to its progressive income tax structure. The point is, whether  you put it on the individual to provide for his and his own (or her as the case may be) or you take from the individual to ensure everyone and his cousin has at least some access to health care, health care is/was/will be a limited resource and will have to be rationed. It just matters how a society decides to do it … is it an individual responsibility or a collective responsibility?

5. I have been following an old high school acquaintance of Facebook these days (by the way, the Facebook IPO is a ripoff, but don’t let anybody know I said that … it produces zip), and one of his latest rants is on Israel. Now, granted he admits he is a progressive (heck he was way back in high school, but that is yet another story), but he thinks the Israelis are far to harsh on the Palestinians and that the Palestinians should be given a contiguous state with East Jerusalem as its capitol. Ironically, the Palestinians have been offered just that or pretty doggone close to it several times and have walked away from the table and rejected it. The most recent time being in 2000 and the first time was in 1947. Of course one could make the same argument that the Jews, who really have just as much a claim to the ancient land of Palestine as the Muslim Arabs, also deserve to have a contiguous state with its capitol in Jerusalem. Of course, it all could have been solved way back in 1947, if Jordan (essentially East Palestine) had just annexed the West Bank and the half of Jerusalem it held, and if Egypt had just annexed the Gaza Strip, instead of administering the area as a giant concentration camp, but that is water under the bridge now.

6. I would go on about the great unease I am feeling about rest of 2012 (and it has nothing to do with the Mayan calendar or any doomsday prophesies) but I think I am going to let that thought continue to percolate in the old noggin a little longer. Just say that I do fear that there may “interesting times” ahead of us, and not necessarily peaceful ones.

Oops

I commend the president and his staff for trying to walk back their rhetoric from his rather inane comments about the the propriety of judicial review.

Even though a judge on a panel of the 5th Circuit did chastised a federal attorney to seek clarification on the Department of Justice’s stance on the court’s prerogative to hold laws enacted by Congress, as well as any other political subdivision in the U.S., as being unconstitutional and therefore invalid.

However, it bothers me, that the goose is complaining about what the gander has been complaining about for many years … sorry, Charlie, but that sword cuts both ways, you know.

Yes, it distresses me that judges keep being identified as political as per the party of the president who appointed them, because as Chief Justice Earl Warren so aptly illustrated, just because a president appoints a person to the bench, that is no assurance that they toe a particular ideology or party line. Sorry, but federal judges, usually as a general rule, are more devoted to the law than to any particular stripe of political thought. Of course, then again, they are humans and do have their own principles to consider.

However, I would hope President Obama, his aides on his White House staff, as well as his supporters, would dial back their rhetoric attacking the legitimacy of the court and its rulings. It really is unhelpful to the state of political and civil dialogue in the United States.

Amazing

It seems that President Obama has called the U.S. Supreme Court a body of “unelected” officials who have no business saying whether a law passed by the elected Congress exceeds the powers granted the legislature by the Constitution or not.

Hello, Mister President, I understood that you were at one time a professor of constitutional law and that statement seems to be like ignoring more than 200 years of U.S. judicial history, law and tradition.

Things are getting really weird in the U.S. and this old journalist/soldier isn’t sure what to make of it all.

It has been accepted since about 1803, that one – and probably the most important – of the roles of U.S. Supreme Court is to decide whether or not specific laws and actions by the other two branches of the federal government meet the test of being within their constitutional powers. It is, to put it bluntly, part of the checks and balances designed into the U.S. Constitution in order to protect the people from government excesses.

In this case, the law being challenged is the president’s signature health care reform act, and – if indications from the questioning of several members (a majority) bear any validity – will be struck down by the court as exceeding the congressional powers as designated in the constitution.

What blows me away is not that President Obama hopes that the court will uphold the law, but his denigrating the court as unelected and therefore should not invalidate a law that has been passed by the majority in any of  our several political divisions and subdivisions.

Hello, were that the case then the “separate but equal doctrine” and all the “Jim Crow” laws that were passed to implement that doctrine would still be in effect and it is very unlikely that the president would even have  been allowed to serve or run.

Be that as it may, what is distressing me more than anything is the absolutely devolution of anything resembling respect for the law, the courts, the system and tradition. We seem to have decided that we would rather not be a nation governed by a set of laws that is – or at least should be and is the goal we strive for – applied equally to all comers, where people are judged not by their status, color of their skin, their sex, their religion, their ancestors or their ideology, but by the fact that they are individual humans, with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

Without respect, even for those viewpoints that disagree with our own, then how can we expect others to respect each of us as individuals.

It is with sadness and regret that I point 0ut that such rhetoric as President Obama’s does little to engender any respect for any decision coming from the U.S. Supreme Court whether it is 9-0 or 5-4 in either upholding or striking down any law or government action.

Without that respect, then there are no limits on what Congress and the Executive Branch are able to do. There will be no checks or balances against their excesses. We will, in reality, then be governed by the whims of men (and women) and not by law which really does so much to bind our society together.

Question: Is that truly the path we want to follow?