Crazy Politico's Rantings

Wisconsin Senate Passes Budget Bill

2011-02-26T04:18:00.002-06:00

The Wisconsin Senate passed a budget repair bill, on a straight party line vote, with no input from the minority party, no floor debate between the parties.

Confused? That was May 12, 2008. About an hour after a conference committee made up only of Democrats and Governor Jim Doyle's staff came up with a repair bill it was brought to the Senate floor, and voted on with two readings, no amendments allowed, and no input from the minority party. The bill passed on a 17-16 vote with 0 Republicans voting for the bill, and 1 Democrat voting against it.

The GOP knew they'd lose the vote, and knew there was nothing they could do about the bill, but did their jobs and voted. Then, in 2010 they beat the Democratic party over the head with it to take control of both chambers and the governors mansion.

The Wisconsin Jewish Conference has a nice summary of the bill and timeline of it's passing, and the vetoes the (then) Governor used to reshape it.

State Representative (now State Senator) Leah Vukmir had this take on the bill. It's a warning from 3 years ago that this year's day of reckoning was coming.

That folks, is how our Democracy works. If the current bill is so flawed, the Democrats have about 18 months to sell that case to the voters, and take back control and undo the bill. I think the problem is they know the majority of the voters like the bill. In 10 or 12 months they won't be able to show that it wasn't a workable solutions, and that the state is still spiralling out of control.

Illinois Budget Solution Found!

2011-02-22T20:44:00.001-06:00

The solution to Illinois' budget woes (another 8.5 billion in debt) has become clear since last Friday. Tourism is the answer. If we can get enough states to follow the lead of Wisconsin; as Indiana did today; and export their Democratic representives to Illinois in a few months we should be able to make a lot of extra money on hotel, restaurant and transportation taxes, helping to fill that shortfall.

Abandoning Wisconsin's Unions

2011-02-20T07:58:00.001-06:00

Wisconsin's public employee unions are being abandoned by the media. Not the Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh media, instead liberals like Time Magazine's Joe Klein and The Washington Post's Charles Lane have dumped their support for the unions and their methods.

Klein kind of summed up the irony of the moments:

I mean, Isn't it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting "Freedom, Democracy, Union" while trying to prevent a vote?

After the Tuscon incident of only a few weeks ago we were all worried about civility in politics. Suddenly Madison has opened some left leaning journalists eyes, showing them their own group is as uncivil as any. John Jagler on Twitter points out that staffers at the capital in Madison have been told not to wear ties to work, evidently to avoid them being used to to assault them.

Lane points out the hypocrisy of the left coming out so quickly:

This is hypocrisy on an epic scale. I can't think of a more overwhelming refutation of the claim that incivility is the unique province of the American right -- as opposed to what it really is and always has been: a two-way street with both right and left lanes. No wonder so many Americans in the broad center of the political spectrum are turned off by both parties and their sanctimonious "bases."

Both at different points call out the Ed Schultz/Rachel Madow wing of the left for spewing false information, having it proven false, and refusing to acknowledge it.

President Obama, during the health care reform debate last year reminded us, as do Klein and Lane, elections have consequences. Though listening to the President this week you'd think he doesn't agree with that idea anymore; or at least the consequences when they aren't the one's he'd like.

The New York Times points out, it's not just Wisconsin going after public sector unions; though Walker is going farther than others. California and New York, led by liberal icons Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo are both attempting to reign in their unions lavish pay and benefits packages also, looking at 8 and 10% pay and benefit cuts. They didn't really mention Chris Christie in New Jersey, who's also gone after the pay and benefits packages, in a much more vocal way.

While the Times isn't quite as blunt as Klein and Lane, read the undercurrent of their article and you see little sympathy for the union's position.

Back to the President's (earlier) thought that elections have consequences. The whole reason Wisconsin flipped both chambers of their legislature and the Governor's office was simple, the people are tired of living in a tax hell. A big chunk of that hell is the personal income tax, which is still higher than neighboring Illinois' after a 66% increase in the Land of Lincoln.

The people saw that the only job growth in their state was in government employment, and realized it's an unsustainable model. Many probably looked at their neighbors to the south and saw that kind of dysfunction heading their way if something wasn't done, soon.

If more recent (than 2 months ago) evidence is needed, again, look to Illinois who did increase taxes considerably, but still has to borrow nearly $9 billion to pay it's past due bills because they didn't do anything about their spending when they jacked up taxes.

The Union's Real Problem

2011-02-18T07:08:00.005-06:00

Anyone watching the news in the last few days has seen the sleep ins, protests, and general unrest in Madison, Wisconsin.

The cause of the consternation is the "budget fix bill" proposed by the Governor, Scott Walker, that would require union members to pay 5.8% towards their retirement, and 12% (up from 6) of the cost of their health care premiums.

It would also restrict collective bargaining to wage packages only, other currently bargained items would fall under the same state laws (some of the most restrictive in the country) that non-represented employees are covered under.

If you spend a little time reading the articles, and especially the comments, in places like the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel you'll see many union members commenting that they'd be happy to bargain for those concessions, but not have them rammed down their throats.

I believe them, I think a good chunk would agree that they right now have a sweet deal that they can't justify to their friends in the private sector. At the same time, they don't want to lose their collective bargaining leverage on other issues, which I can't blame them for.

The problem is, it's not the rank and file pushing the issues, it's the union leadership, and frankly, they'd cave on the whole thing except for one small provision in the bill. That provision makes Wisconsin essentially a right to work state. It forbids the deduction of union dues from paychecks, and requires annual certification votes by members.

Once people start writing checks for due, it becomes personal. They start wondering what exactly they are getting for the money. When it happens unions generally fold, because workers doing their own cost-benefit analysis figure out they aren't getting much for that check.

They also don't like this because for years they failed to unionize many public employees. During the eight years of Jim Doyle's administration a number of laws were passed that took that choice from the workers, and put them in unions without a vote by anyone but a Democratic controlled state legislature.

How did they manage that? It was actually easy, just find a group of non-represented workers who work in an area with a union presence; the University system's admin and some support staff for example; and reclassify their positions into a group that's already represented. Voila! You suddenly have thousands of new dues paying members without needing a vote by the affected people.

So when you listen to the news reports about AWOL legislators, protesting teachers, and sick-outs, keep in mind that the rank and file union members probably aren't the biggest obstacle in Madison, the union leadership and their reduced funding is.

Sell Your Stocks December 14th

2010-12-03T10:39:00.003-06:00

With Congress messing around with extending the "Bush Era Tax Cuts" there is a stock market crash being brewed that could wipe out any gains you've seen this year.

Unless Congress acts before then, on January 1st the capital gains rate will go up from 15% to 20% for most people who claim them, and from 0% to 10% for the lowest two tax brackets. This means that folks will look to realize any gains in 2010 to avoid the higher taxes. Don't believe it, look back to the 1987 increase.

Here's my thought, I'm pretty sure that those rates are going to jump. Why? To get a compromise to get none of the personal income tax rates raised the GOP will have to give in on something. Capital gains taxes are the easiest, because the general public doesn't understand them, and doesn't think they pay them.

So December 15th looms as the big day for the market; for a bad reason. That is the day most options contracts are due, which means people who have an options contract, and will realize a gain, will probably sell it instead of hanging on. Think of all of those getting dumped in one day....Uh Oh.

So, if you want to avoid the Christmas Rush so to speak, sell on the 14th when the market will be teeting on the edge instead of fully falling. But sell if you want to get a lower rate on the gains. Or, you can hang on to the stocks, and hope that in 2012 there is a change in Senate and Whitehouse occupants that would restore the lower rates.

A Bielema Dig?

2010-11-20T22:04:00.004-06:00

I believe Bret Bielema, head coach of the University of Wisconsin football team took a dig at his critics today. Not to a reporter, but on the field of play.

Last week Wisconsin rolled Indiana by a score of 83-20, and many national media pundits were up in arms about that score. Many complained that Wisconsin still passed the ball in the fourth quarter, with a huge lead. They didn't mention it was 3rd and 4th string players still scoring on Indiana, only that Wisconsin kept scoring. Evidently the players were supposed to take a knee after any gain of more than 2 yards to give Indiana the ball back.

This week Bielema took a shot at them by calling 29 straight running plays in the second half against Michigan (31 if the victory formation is counted). They still scored four more times, with only 1 pass in the half. The message was pretty simple, run, pass, whatever, the defense has to stop us, and they haven't been able to lately.

Bielema would have been justified throwing this week, Michigan was making a run and got to within 2 scores a couple of times. They continually stacked the box with nine men. They still ran, and still scored.

LSU, Stanford, TCU and Boise State will all be looking at the films from the last two games; those are the most likely opponents for Wisconsin come bowl time. My guess would be each will hope one of the others gets to play the Badgers.

Thank A Veteran Today

2010-11-11T18:22:00.002-06:00

Today is Veteran's Day. When you see one, thank him or her for their service.

My daughter put her thoughts on the day into a poem.

Look around and see the beauty,
Take a look at the joys we have,
Be amazed at what we can do,
Think of what it took to have all this.
Our freedoms, our rights, our lives,
Stop and think of why you enjoy a life as such
A man, a woman, a father, a mother,
A son or a daughter gives their life each day
A life taken so another can be fulfilled
Freedom isn’t free, but fought for and died for
To the men, women, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters
Thank you for paying for our freedom,
You are not forgotten,
You are not forsaken,
Thank you for the lives that we enjoy today.
**Stop today and thank a Veteran for the lives we’ve become accustomed to**

Apple Has Become What It Despised

2010-11-05T14:40:00.004-05:00

As I read Steve Jobs lately, extolling the virtues of the iPad/iPod/iPhone and their company controlled markets and development, I realize that his company has become what it claimed it hated back in 1984.

One of his companies big complaints in 1984 was there was no way to customize your PC. Everything was as "Big Blue" said it would be. The Mac was changing all of that with a customizable desktop and easier way to do things.

Now today he sings the praises of every iPhone and iPad having the exact same look and layout.

As a guy on his second Android phone I will say I like the customization. The standard Android setup on my Samsung model was alright, but I wanted a little more. I could add it myself through skins, or whatever. Those are verboten in the iStore, Apple controls the look and feel. Now with my HTC unit I like the 5 main screens and some of their included widgets. Who knows, I may look at Motorola next.

Now I'm looking at Tablet's. My first reaction to the iPad is cool, but too big, too expensive. While Jobs hates the idea of a 7 inch screen I actually like it compared to the 10" screen on an iPad. If I want to use it as a reader, not just a PC replacement 7" is just about right. 10 is too much to lay in bed with (shut up ladies).

Unlike some folks I don't see a tablet PC as a replacement for my notebook or desktop. More of an augmentation. Nice to use to quickly check e-mail, surf the net etc., but not great for doing anything major, real keyboards still work better for that.

So, now I'll wait until after the xMas rush and then start looking. Having looked at the iPad, I know I won't be getting one of those.

Note to the Tea Party

2010-11-03T16:17:00.004-05:00

Dear Tea Party Folks,

I'll give you credit, last night you won some good victories. You also left a few seat in the other guys hands because of your candidates.

Contrary to the Tea Party/Libertarian philosophies, politics is as much an art of dealing with the distasteful when necessary as it is standing always on one set of principles. If you don't believe that, just look at that huge delegation from the Green Party in congress, or Libertarians for that matter.

Sometimes, and in some places, you are going to have to accept that a "mainstream GOP" candidate is going to BETTER represent your agenda than the Democrat who's sure to win against your next Christine O'Donnell.

No one wanted a Sharron Angle to win more than me, I despise Harry Reid. But the fact is, I never doubted that she'd lose. Nevada is full of good GOP candidates, and you picked the loser.

Again, you get credit, you did better than the Kosite Netroots in 2004, when all of their candidates went down in flames. However, you still have a bunch to learn about politics.

Note to the GOP

2010-11-03T13:57:00.002-05:00

Dear GOP,

Last night you won some resounding victories in the election. Four years ago you got your clocks cleaned, and now have made up that ground and more in the House. However, you only control one branch of government, not 3, and will have to do some compromising.

As much as the Tea Party folks want you to repeal anything President Obama has signed in the last couple of years, you can't. What you can do is modify some of it. Some folks in the party might cringe, but you'll have to find some common ground with Obama and Reid if you want to do anything.

Secondly, if you haven't noticed, this is the 3rd election cycle in a row where America has voted for "change". So, doing nothing, or worse; obstructing everything; will probably have you leading the charge out of town again in 2012.

The truth is you have about 16 months to actually accomplish anything. After that we start hitting early caucus' and primary elections for 2012, and as this year proved, nothing happens from the start of the primary season until after the election. No one wants to cast a vote that might kill them come November.

Note to the President

2010-11-03T13:43:00.004-05:00

Mr. President,

Having just read through your remarks today, I have to ask, were your exit pollsters also pushing Proposition 19 in California?

Listen, when you lose over 60 seats in the House, and the #1 reason given by voters is that the government has gone too far with health care reform and spending, you should listen. Instead, I see a guy who may think doubling down in the next two years is a good thing.

I don't believe for a second the entire health care bill can be removed, you've still got a veto pen, and Harry Reid in charge of the Senate. However, you are going to have to scale it back. If not, you're party becomes the "Party of No" come 2012, like "No Senate, No White House".

Secondly, don't listen to Robert Reich. Yeah, he's smart in some ways, and somehow survived Clinton's move to the center. But if you take his advice and continue to tack left, you'll find no help anywhere. There are a number of Senators in your party who have to live through 2012, they won't if they side with you on more far left agenda items. (Ask Russ Feingold how it worked out for him).

Finally, guys like Tom Daschle and Trent Lott are going to start offering you advice on how to not only get along for the next two years, but possibly thrive. Listen to them. You may in your heart of hearts believe you are the smartest guy in the room, but they are the most experienced; and one thing I've learned in life is that a lot of degrees don't always make you the best for the job, but a lot of experience usually does.

Hey

2010-08-29T21:26:00.000-05:00

Hey, I almost blogged yesterday.

Still Here

2010-08-06T22:24:00.004-05:00

I'm still alive and kicking in case you are wondering; at least the 6 a day who still check.

Quite honestly, politics has become boring. Grandkids and jogging, those are getting more fun. Politics, not so much.

In fact, I'm still awake because the daughter is bringing the whole family up for the weekend. So I'll have all 4 of my grandkids, plus the in utero fifth visiting me tomorrow. That will be fun!

Just to make sure some extra folks read this, I'll say something controversial.

Ron Paul is the Ralph Nader of the right. Except I'm not sure Ron, running as a libertarian; could get enough votes to keep the party on the ballot a second cycle.

Going Down to the Crossroads

2010-06-26T08:05:00.003-05:00

I'll be heading out shortly for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival.

Little Bro and I are looking forward to 12 hours of incredible music. I'll let the rest of you know during the show with a few posts.

2010-06-24T21:46:00.002-05:00

This is why I love having grandkids. My Grandson John is playing with Grandma Politico (or The Lovely Wife), watch what happens when he realizes there is a camera on him.

Close the Locks

2010-06-24T15:02:00.003-05:00

Asian Carp have been found in Calumet Lake; within 6 miles of Lake Michigan, past the electric barriers in the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal that are supposed to keep them from getting to the lake.

A few months ago the President and the Interior Department, along with the courts; shot down a multi-state effort to get the locks on the Chicago Canal shut, to keep the carp out of the Great Lakes.

Now, considering the barrier isn't working; and using the President's own logic on the environment; it's time to shut the locks. You see earlier this week the Government cried in court that the BP disaster should require that all other deep water operations be stopped, just in case. So, shouldn't we also shut the locks? Shouldn't we protect the 7 billion dollar a year Great Lakes fishing industry from the Asian Carp? Just in case there are more of them this side of the barrier.

Here's the problem with doing the right thing, it would end up costing a folks in the shipping industry, who use the canal to get goods to and from the Gulf coast via the canal, Des Plaines River and the Mississippi river. There are other methods, such as rail, or other directions, like the St. Lawrence Seaway, but they are more expensive and take longer.

That would get pressure put on Chicago pols by folks who usually give them lots of money, the unions that work those shipping barges. Politicians hate to have their donors hold back money, so they will pressure the Interior Department to keep the locks open.

So, while the President tells us how much he wants to avoid an ecological and environmental disaster on the Gulf Coast, he will ignore an impending disaster in the Great Lakes area to avoid pissing off part of his money base.

When Rome is Burning

2010-06-20T06:14:00.002-05:00

If you are the CEO of BP, and your companies figurative Rome is burning, playing the fiddle, or racing a yacht; is a bad PR move.

Ignore the fact that the day before the media was telling us; on a regular basis; that Hayward had screwed up so bad testifying before congress that the Chairman and board relieved him of many of his duties, and all of them relating to the Gulf Coast disaster.

So, with no pressing matter on his plate, Hayward did what a lot of us would do, decompress. Except that isn't allowed when there is a catastrophe going on. He's supposed to be doing SOMETHING about that oil leak.

I'm not exactly sure what he should have been doing about it yesterday. With no authority from the Board of Directors, and probably not a degree in anything that would make him helpful on scene. I guess maybe he should just go sit in a lawn chair on a Louisiana or Mississippi beach, stare at the water, and cry.

More Spill Laughs

2010-06-19T05:33:00.004-05:00

Watching the coverage of Tony Hayward (BP CEO) in front of a House subcommittee the other day made me crack up. It's easy to see who in Congress has no clue about how the "real world" works whenever they question a corporate executive.

First off, the folks in DC should be happy Hayward showed up. Only PR outweighs legal concerns; and when a government says they are conducting a criminal investigation normally (ask Bill Clinton) you don't answer questions to the folks doing the investigating.

The shock and outrage over the fact that a CEO didn't know what type of cement or steel lining sleeve was used on one of hundreds of wells being drilled doesn't show an out of touch CEO; it shows an unknowable group of questioners.

The truth is, CEO's can't know, and shouldn't know, every minor step going on with every project their company is running. That isn't what they are supposed to do, and if they are that involved in the minutia of daily operations, they are probably failing at their bigger job of actually running the corporation.

The other laugh is the e-mails; or more accurately, the portions congress has seen fit to release to paint BP in a worse light.

I would be dollars to donuts that the head of my department doesn't know that I worked on a machine for the last couple of weeks that I've labeled a nightmare (as was the deep water horizon well); a hermaphroditic bastard step child, and many other unprintable names. My department head is only about 2 steps above me. If he doesn't know that, why would the CEO? The truth is the machine was all of those things, and I was still confident that I would get it working, there was no reason to go above my manager with that information.

Go find anyone who works on one of a kind things; which each drill operation like that is; and they'll tell you such euphemisms are used regularly. And most of the time not reported to the guys at the top of the food chain. Engineers and workers vent all the time, and the boss doesn't need to hear it.

Does all this mean I think BP or Hayward is blameless, no not at all. BP cut corners, and should face some stiff fines from it. Their safety practices on this and other jobs does need to be looked into. But Congressional grillings only meant to sensationalize the whole incident are no more helpful than the Presidents group of smart people who have yet to come up with an idea on how to fix this.

The Spill Won't Make A Difference

2010-06-17T05:06:00.004-05:00

I got my laugh yesterday, and proved my point that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico isn't going to get Americans to rush away from an oil based economy.

One of the folks I see regularly; who I believe would live on tofu and sprouts; was almost giddy with excitement over the possibility of us moving to alternatives to oil.

So I asked how she got to work. (Here answers in italics)

The answer was "my car".

Why not take the bus?

I live in the country; the nearest bus stop is 2 miles.

Why not ride your bike to it?

I have a lot of stuff I have to bring, and what about the weather?

Why not have hubby drop you off?

He doesn't leave for work until 6:30, he'd have to go 90 minutes early.

Why not move closer to the city, so you would be able to get a bus or train easier?

We like it where we are.

And therein lies the problem. Even the tofu crowd likes their houses in the 'burbs where public transportation is hard to use due to time and distance. You're not going to get rid of cars; the biggest oil users; until we figure out how to get to work from our little acre in the country.

They love the idea of electric cars until you remind that they have to be recharged, which is going to require more power plants. "Hydrogen!" they proclaim, until they realize the only economical way to hydrogen is through drilling for natural gas and cracking that, since getting it from water uses 4 times more energy than you recover.

Don't even get into the longer distance transporation of people and goods. Then you need trains, semi-trucks and aircraft. There isn't a good alternative for them other than oil based fuel.

Stop Doing Studies

2010-05-27T04:14:00.003-05:00

The slow drip of unintended consequences of the new health care law keeps going. The only fix for the drip is repeal it would seem.

What's the latest? Another study showing that the promise that "if you like what you have you can keep it" isn't going to be true.

Employer Survey Sees Health Costs Rising points out what those of us who've spent our lives in the real world, not government or academia said during the debate. Costs are going to go up, and companies are going to cut something to keep the bottom line healthy. The cuts will come at the expense of employees.

How certain are the cuts? Well the survey looked at 661 companies with a median workforce of 5600 employees; these aren't "small businesses", they are the big guys. 74 percent said they were going to have to cut employee benefits, or raise their employees direct costs because of the fiscal impact of the law.

43 percent that provide retiree health care said they would be cutting or completely eliminating those benefits.

Now I'm pretty sure if someone in the media actually asked the White House about all the studies showing that most every promise made during the debate will be broken the White House response would be to quit doing studies.

Epiphany Time

2010-05-12T21:12:00.003-05:00

Last night I was exercising at the hotel and felt pretty good. I did a little over 20 minutes on the treadmill and then about 300 yards in the pool. 300 doesn't sound like much, but if you are out of shape, it's a painfully long distance.

Tonight I figured on the same thing, or very similar amounts of time. While on the treadmill I sped it up about 0.5mph faster than last night after about 15 minutes. At the 20 minute mark, when I thought I'd be quitting, I decided I wanted to watch the duct taped car on Myth Busters, so I stayed on the treadmill for an extra 10 minutes. And didn't feel like I'd done too much, which is good.

So I changed into my swim suit and hit the pool. About lap 10 of 20 (to get to 300 yards) I started thinking about what my goals need to be in this new health kick. There is the obvious goal of not being back in ICU with a sandbag on my groin holding the sutures down. But that's too obvious. A healthier heart? That's pretty simple. What I needed was some concrete goals that are attainable, but not easily.

I need something to push me, something to make me push myself a little harder when I want to take a day off.

So the longer term goal I came up with, which is an 18 month (from my heart attack) goal is to be down to 185lbs and wearing a 32 waist pant again when I take the wife to Hawaii for our anniversary.

That's about a 55lb weight loss, and 5-6 inches off of my (currently fat) waist. I'm figuring that I should hit that goal earlier than that, so about 3 months should be seeing if I'm capable of sticking with it after I hit the goal.

Shorter term; by this anniversary; I'd like to be down to 210, which is attainable if I keep some diet and exercise discipline. It's about 3/4 of a pound per week of weight loss, which is not a bad target.

As I kept swimming; 15 more laps instead of 10; and while I walked 10 cool down trips around the pool I kept repeating the goals over and over. It wasn't a "convince myself I could do it talk", it was more of the coach drilling the team on how a certain set of plays should work. This is something I know I can do, I just have to drill me on it each day at rehab, or in a hotel gym, or taking a walk with the wife.

I know I want to do it because of that obvious goal up above. And because I really don't want to see "that look" on the wife's face again when I get put in the back of the meat wagon.

Best Qualified?

2010-05-11T22:21:00.001-05:00

So Ms. Kagan is the most qualified person available to replace John Paul Stevens? Based on a resume with three published article in minor journals, no experience as a judge, and a lackluster tour as Dean of Harvard Law and a clerkship under Thurgood Marshall?

My guess is there are a couple of dozen Federal judges more qualified. the truth is her age (50) has as much to do with the nomination as anything.

President Obama figures he can stamp the court with his mold for three decades by getting Kagan confirmed.

The question is will her Harvard days haunt her? she had the chance to fill 29 faculty positions, she hired 28 white males. Can you imagine John Roberts trying to defend that record?

Two Months, I am Amazed

2010-05-02T06:54:00.003-05:00

It's been two months since I quit smoking. Honestly, I'm amazed. I've tried before, and made it 3-6 weeks at a shot before I found a reason (usually bad) to go pick up a pack of cigarettes. This time I haven't.

My recent heart issues and health scares have definitely helped this time around. 'Knowing' cigarettes are a big contributor to heart problems is one thing, experiencing it is quite another.

The other thing that has helped has been my lovely wife, who has also quit. She's been 3 weeks without a cigarette, and I couldn't be prouder of her. She noticed yesterday afternoon she'd forgotten to put on her nicotine patch, and didn't miss it.

As for the down side to quitting, I don't see Andrew, the clerk at 7-11 nearly as much as I used to, but I still stop by once in a while to get the wife a candy bar (her new vice) or a jug of milk. The other down side is my income taxes will probably go up. I figure as much as I was paying a year in cigarette taxes to Illinois the state will have to raise income taxes to make up for what I'm not giving them.

Rehab for Me

2010-04-29T18:55:00.001-05:00

That's right, I am heading to rehab tomorrow. Cardiac rehab that is. 36 sessions of aerobic training to try and start undoing 40 some years of abuse of that poor organ.

Quiet Again

2010-04-11T07:37:00.002-05:00

So my house is quiet again. My son and his family's temporary stay ended yesterday when they got into their own apartment. So now I don't have to be as quiet in the morning, in hopes that a toddler wouldn't wake up. I can also walk around in just my boxers and not get yelled at.

If there was going to be a month to have them back in the house, this last one was the correct one. Having a little extra help when I got out of the hospital was nice, and having the little dude around to cheer me up didn't hurt any either. Though keeping him off parts of me that didn't need to be jumped on was a little tough.

Thanks kids, for all your help. Now enjoy being in your own place again, I'm sure you'll like not being here as much as we like you being there :)

Bad Idea

2010-04-01T21:41:00.000-05:00

So I was on Facebook a little bit early and noticed a high school friend had joined the group "Make it Illegal to Protest At Military Funerals".

You'd think that as a veteran I'd love the idea of that group, but I don't. In fact, I hate it. I think it espouses exactly the opposite of what I and most of my comrades in arms fought for.

You see, I didn't spend 21 years serving to protect your freedom of speech; unless it's something I find offensive. I didn't spend those years protecting your right to assemble; unless it's for a reason I don't agree with.

That's not the deal, America. The deal is, someone like Fred Phelps wants to be a jackass at a military members funeral, then another group needs to show up at his church and shout down his sermon. Exercise your freedom of speech, too. People need to march around his house at midnight shouting (and be willing to pay the ticket for it). That's how it works here, protest and counter protest.

We shouldn't pass laws her to pick out one guy or one group to make sure they can't do something. That's not why this country was founded. We came her for just the opposite reason, to make sure that a jack ass could be a jack ass, and the government wouldn't shut him up.

Everytime we pass a law like that, whether it's a "hate speech" law to protect someone from being offended, or the idea of a law to ban flag burning, we take a little bit of America away. When freedom of speech is replaced by freedom of speech except as outlined in paragraph c6; then we aren't quite the America we were a while back. And we aren't the one I spent 21 years defending.

There is Some Good Everywhere

2010-03-31T21:19:00.003-05:00

You know, the one thing the last month has me is that you can find some beauty anywhere if you look. Well, anywhere but my 401(k) since every company in it has decided the new health care law is going to require them to take a bath.

For instance, Peoria, Illinois is not my favorite city. I remember seeing it years ago with a dull gray haze hanging over it. They've cleaned it up quite a bit since those days, but the city still suffers from horrible unemployment, and has many areas that could use some sprucing up.

But when you see it from East Peoria across the river, with the sun starting to come down, it looks completely different.

It's my metaphor for the whole heart attack incident. From one angle it sucks; new diet without a lot of my favorite things. Can't really sit around and hammer beers; need to start working out. None of those are things that really make me happy.

Then there is the flip side. I'm here and get to play with my grandson John. Dylan, my daughter's first born will arrive any day now, and I'm going to be able to travel and visit them. I'm not crazy about giving up my morning donuts, but I've got no complaint about the 15 pounds I've given up by not having them.

It's also reminded me how important a lot of folks in my life are to me. After you spend enough time with people you start to take them for granted. Then when you really need them you realize why you've stuck with them for so long; and you are glad they stuck with you.

Just Ten Thousand Jobs

2010-03-28T08:47:00.001-05:00

AT&T is the latest company to let shareholders know that it will have to take a huge charge; in their case ONE BILLION DOLLARS; because of the passage of ObamaCare.

For AT&T this is probably going to be an annual charges until 2012, that's when the union contract most of their retirees are covered under expires. At that point expect a pretty ugly negotiation. The current employees will be demanding they keep everything, and the retirees are going to be screaming about how much they are going to lose. Sorry retirees, you'll come out on the short end of the stick.

Until 2010 how does a company make up a billion dollars that suddenly vanished? Well, if you have no seniority at AT&T I'd be polishing up that resume. With consumers still not spending increasing prices on their products probably isn't going to happen. That means that cutting staff is the likely way to get that money back.

But don't worry, it's only about 10,000 jobs that they'd have to pare back for the next couple of years. But really, they'll start rehiring. Really, they will. Okay, maybe not, many states have already started calculating the jobs losses that are going to be caused by the ObamaCare bill, and it isn't pretty. Marathon Pundit has a nice list up of the jobs being lost by Sallie Mae, since the health care reform bill also federalized all guaranteed student loans.

One good thing, the bill has $10 billion in it for expansion of the IRS since they will be handling the compliance issues with the individual mandate. So those displaced workers might be able to find jobs as auditors with the IRS.

New Outlook

2010-03-26T22:59:00.001-05:00

It's funny how one ambulance ride can change a guy's outlook on life. 10 Days ago I was still convinced my medical issues this month were caused by a new medication. 9 days ago and a trip to the ER in an ambulance and we figured out that wasn't the problem.

I started thinking about that this morning as I was checking into the doctors office. The nurse noticed my weight was down about 12 lbs from three weeks ago, and my blood pressure was much better.

She hadn't been around this month, so she hadn't seen much of me since my physical. She asked what diet I was on and I told her it's the "I had a heart attack and need to change my life diet".

The nurse laughed and said something I've been saying for a few decades, "eat healthy, exercise often and die anyway". That's as true today as it was last Tuesday, or last month, or when I was 25. The difference is, I think I'll wait a while for the last part of it. And if that means eating healthy and exercising often, so be it.

I quit smoking just before all of the heart issues showed up. I originally did it to save money.

Suddenly knowing that my ticker might quit ticking again, I've found another reason to quit. Before last Wednesday I wanted a smoke about 3 or 4 times a day. Now I really don't care, I forget to put my nicotine patches on but don't get the jitters when someone else lights up.

When I had my physical and my cholesterol and blood pressure were way to high, I had no problem with taking the pills. But changing the diet? Hey, I like traditional cooking with butter and cream. You take the pills so you can do eat that stuff, right.

Now I've got no problem with vegetable broth instead of cream and butter in my mashed potatoes, and making low sodium soups. If it'll keep me out of the ambulance, I'll do it.

I even bought an American Heart Association cookbook, and one from Readers Digest for low sodium cooking.

And, as soon as I get the okay from the cardiologist, and my disability check from work; I plan on joining the park district gym. They've got some great cardio equipment in there, and it's only 5 blocks from the house.

I'm sure some of this new found health kick will wear off in a while. I'm not sure how long until I want to cook with cream again, but hopefully when I do too my wife will remind me of how she was feeling last Wednesday; as we sat at a gas station with 4 paramedics crawling through my truck to get me out and into the ambulance. I never want to put her through anything like it again.

Wacky Health Care Video

2010-03-25T20:58:00.003-05:00

Thanks to James T. over at the National Conversation for this one.

Change the Subject!

2010-03-25T11:43:00.002-05:00

So, now we hear of the poor Democratic members of Congress, complaining people are harassing them, and maybe even threatening violence.

Here's my guess folks, they are getting the same number of those e-mails and crank calls today as they did last Friday. The difference, today they are good fodder to change the subject from the Health Care Takeover Act to anything else.

Why? Well, the facts are getting out, and the heat is getting turned up. No one told the folks who work at Caterpillar, John Deere and Verizon that their companies would take a hundred million dollar tax hit this year, and have to lay off thousands to compensate. Those thousands are probably going to be mad as hell.

Why are they taking that tax hit this year? Well, they did the right thing a few years back and provided their retirees with prescription drug coverage. For that, they get about $665 per year from the feds; which trims the government cost for drugs by over $550 per retiree. So it's a win -win the government saves money by giving the subsidy, and the retirees end up with better prescription drug coverage.

Now, though, under the new law, that subsidy is considered business income, and taxed at 35%. So the companies will take a huge hit, and be required to restate earnings because of it. But; to them; there is an easy way out. They are going to drop the drug coverage for the retirees, quit taking the subsidy, and not have the tax burden of it. Instead, the tax payers get the full hit for the retiree drug coverage, and the retirees have to enroll in the Medicare plan now.

This will of course increase the cost of the Health Care bill by billions, and everyone in DC will say "Never saw that coming".

So much for keeping what you've got if you like it. Just another example of how Congress understands no law it passes; and no lawyer can litigate the law of unintended consequences.

So remember, when you hear Congressman Dorkus D-Wherever whine about threats, it's not really about a new threat, it's to get folks to quit talking about the piece of crap bill he or she voted for.

Health Care Reform Facts

2010-03-24T21:29:00.002-05:00

The first big sticker shock of the new ObamaCare era will happen later this year, when the community rating guidelines become final and binding. Suddenly, a whole lot of people under age 62 are going to see higher healthcare premiums and wonder why that is.

They shouldn't worry though, they will be getting subsidies to help with those premiums; ooops, not until 2013 or 2014; sorry to make it looks like this thing saves money they will only collect taxes for four years, not give you the subsidy you were promised.

As for all of you folks that are cheering because pre-existing conditions are now covered, that doesn't happen until 2014. Until then you can (and will) still be rejected unless they are willing to pay big.

Hey, like your current plan, aren't you glad you get to keep it. Maybe... Well if it has a flexible spending account or an HSA as part of it, you don't really get to keep it. Those don't fit the new guildelines for proper insurance, so you'll have to find something else. Sorry if it costs more.

Do you work for a small business, that treats you really well with insurance. Sorry to say that you have about a 1 in 3 chance of having your policy cancelled and being told to buy from the "exchange". Why? Easy, the fine for most businesses to not cover you is much cheaper than buying you insurance. Sorry, you don't get to keep what you have either.

Sorry to piss on your parade, just thought a few facts might be good to have. But look on the bright side, at least McDonalds will be required to post the nutritional info on their drive through board. That's worth the trade-offs, right.

Whats Next?

2010-03-22T07:04:00.004-05:00

So, now that the Democrats can either crow that they got their landmark legislative accomplishment passed, or cry because they'll be losing their jobs come November, what's next?

Here's a few guesses. First, huge parts of this law are going to get gutted by the courts before most of it goes into effect.

There are probably three things that will be subjected to a lot of legal challenges.

1) The Individual Mandate. This will probably get thousands of individual court challenges, in every district of the Federal system. That's going to make it the funnest part of the whole thing. The 9th is going to find some reason that it's constitutional, the 4th is going to laugh and put a stay on enforcement, and DC is going to spin like a top trying to figure out what to do.

My guess is that it will be fast tracked and in the next 18 months end up in Robert's hands at the Supreme Court, where it will die a 5-4 death.

That decision, though, will doom private insurance. The mandate is the only reason they are behind this bill. Without it there is no chance they can make money with the other insurance restrictions on the bill.

2) Individual "Sweetheart deals" that some states got to get votes. While the reconciliation bill killed the Cornhusker Kickback, Louisiana is still getting $100 billion to 300 billion in extra cash, Florida seniors keep Medicare Advantage while everyone else loses it, one town in Montana gets it's Medicare paid for.

Many state AG's threatened to sue over those provisions in December when the Senate passed the bill. Expect it to happen shortly after the signing. The Florida medicare advantage clause may well be the one that dooms a bunch of the bill.

3)While many states are going to scream about the hundreds of billions in unfunded mandates, they don't have much standing to do anything about the bill. Unfortunately for them (and us) the courts have upheld the federal government's ability to pass costs to the states many times.

My guess is that at least one state will be able to say the new Medicaid costs will bankrupt them, and threaten to file a Chapter 9 petition for bankruptcy unless the Feds pick up more of the cost. By the way, Illinois, my state, would be a perfect fit. Unfortunately, our lackeys in Springfield think this is a good idea.

Failing Me

2010-03-20T04:53:00.004-05:00

My personal version of Nationalized Health Care, the VA, has failed me; surprise.

I noted on the 8th that they'd be testing me quite a bit. I had a cardiac stress test that week, which I failed, and a pulmonary function which was good, and an echo test, which was also good. So, the following Monday an imaging stress test was done. Radioactive isotopes were pumped into my blood, I ran a treadmill, and then had pictures of my heart taken.

This is where the system failed. I failed the test; bad enough to cause a couple of doctors a lot of concern; but not enough to get anyone to pick up a phone and call me. I was scheduled for a visit on Thursday, so they planned on telling me then, evidently.

The problem is, I had a heart attack (luckily mild) Wednesday night. Thursday I was feeling well enough to call the VA, and notify them I'd be unable to attend my appointment, I was in the hospital due to the above mentioned heart attack, and was going to be taken for a catheterization shortly.

Six hours later (the same person) called back and asked my wife why I missed my appointment, and told her it was really important I see a the cardiologist, there were problems with my stress test. While I know the Internet isn't censored, I'll avoid posting the wife's response out of respect for any nuns who might read this.

Friday, shortly before the cardiologist who performed part of my procedure came to see me; the attending physician who treated me 2 weeks earlier at the VA called. She'd been doing follow up reviews, saw my stress test, and realized I hadn't been to cardiology (there). So she wanted to let me know it was urgent I saw a the cardiologist. I explained what had transpired over the last 36 hours, and assured her, I'd seen one, just not on my terms.

Here's why the VA failed in this episode, and why my government run health care has failed so often in 30 years. The Bureaucracy of the system is the issue. Most doctors other than GP's don't make decisions on their own.

As was my case a cardiology fellow did the (2nd) stress test, and dicated it. But he didn't call me, instead, he sent the dication to a secretary for transcription. It's not her job (nor should it be) to call patients back, so she didn't. The head of cardiology has to review the transcript in a record, and approve of any recommendations. He did, but he didn't notify me, why bother, I'd be in the next day for an appointment. Unless of course I had a heart attack.

Contrast that to how most "regular health care works". The cardiologist orders a stress test, in the case of my first one I failed. At that point most civilian cardiologists immediately admit you, and order the follow up imaging stress test. This is especially true in cases like mine with a family history and basically every bad marker for heart disease.

Then they run the next test and keep you until they have read the images and decide what it says. In my case, it would have dictated an immediate catheterization, so at that point a number of meds would have been started, and I'd have been doing nothing that could cause any stress on my heart until I was on the table getting fixed.

So instead of going from the 5th, when I was first admitted to the hospital for observation, to the 18th when I had the procedure, I probably would have been completely through the test battery and "fixed" by the 10th or 12th. Six days and 1 heart attack sooner.

This isn't to say there is nothing right with either the VA, or the Military Treatment Facility I go to for my primary care. For general care, and preventive medicine they are pretty good. My annual physical this year found that my blood pressure was getting back out of control, and that my cholesterol had jumped back up too high. It actually started the ball rolling on some of this stuff.

But once they get out of that area to specialty care, the wheels fall off. The same physical couldn't find the problem with one of my hands, so off I go to a specialist. Except there's exactly one in a hundred mile radius that will accept the government reimbursement rate to treat it. He's booked until late April. I guess another 2 months (my physical was late February) isn't long to wait.

What I Love About Baseball

2010-03-14T19:21:00.001-05:00

Football is my favorite sport, but baseball holds some allure for me also. Today driving back from the store I was reminded of on of the things I love about the game' Bob Uecker.

I have been trying for most of the evening to figure out another guy in the game who could get Bob Costas into the booth to help call a spring training game. Uecker had him in for at least 3 innings today.

If you ever wondered, Costas has a great sense of humor, and can be good as the lead or the straight man.

Uecker, even in his 70's is still quick as ever with the jokes, and as sharp with the game.

If you get to the Milwaukee area and the Brewers are playing tune into 620 am and give Uke a listen, you never know what you'll hear, but it's sure to be good.

Uncle Sam is Enron

2010-03-14T10:21:00.006-05:00

Guess what folks. Remember all that extra money Social Security was collecting, well they aren't anymore. This year they have to pay out $29 billion more in benefits than they collected in taxes. That means breaking into the office in West Virginia that holds 2.5 trillion in government bonds (really IOUs).

Think about that for a minute. If your private company decided that it was going to spend all of the money it made, plus it's reserve fund, then repay the reserve fund with IOU's, from itself, it would be called Enron. When the IOU's came due and the accounts were all broke, Congress would be holding investigations and the CEO and CFO would go on trial. When Congress does it this is called "safe investing".

Did you know that your company can't legally require you to put any of your retirement into company stock? Yet the government gives you no choice but invest your social security payroll tax in their bonds.

If you wonder why the deficit is going up so fast, keep in mind that for the last 30 years we've been counting the Social Security surplus twice. We count it the first time and claim it's a surplus, then spend it (replacing the money with T-Bills). Then we count that money again as part of the general budget to show lower deficits than we truly have.

Bill Clinton never had a balanced budget, the closest he ever came was really about $330 billion in deficit spending, then raided the Social Security surplus to tell us it was balanced. Every President since Social Security started has done the same thing.

So how do we fix the Social Security problem? First, we'll have to raise the payroll tax, either on everyone paying it, or extend the limit on the amount that's taxable; or cut benefits (good luck with that).

Then the surplus needs to actually be put somewhere that the government isn't paying itself for the use of the money. Either corporate bonds, or another government's debt would be the safest place to do it. Then when the IOU's are do, Uncle Sam isn't trying to pay you with money he has to borrow. Instead he's paying you with money coming from a different source.

Congressfolks have demonized the idea of investing Social Security's money anywhere but in the same government that's supposed to pay the benefits; but at the same time have made it illegal for private business to do the same thing. If business isn't allowed to do it, there is probably a reason, one that government should probably think about in terms of itself.

Cool New Stuff

2010-03-12T20:26:00.004-06:00

New Years Day I got a new Samsung Moment phone. It's one of those "android phones" that runs a slim version of Linux on it. So far I'm loving the thing, though I've been told I shouldn't since it doesn't have the latest and greatest version of Android. I'm thinking if I like this version this much, when the next update comes out in a month or so, I should be that much happier.

I can now get my home and work e-mail on the phone, which is great for those times I don't have my laptop set up and ready to use and need to read something from work. Today I found Google Synch, which allows me to synchronize the calendar on my phone (which is through gmail) and my outlook clients on both home and work computers.

So now instead of putting stuff into the phone, or the work or the home, or worse, all 3 calendars, if I put it in one within 3 hours or so all of them will be up to date. That's pretty handy.

Another cool toy I found today was a barcode scanner program. Hold a barcode up to the phone's camera. It will look it up, and then if you want search for the product online, and give you the prices. Not 100% accurate, but pretty cool to play with, should be great for checking prices in stores.

I Worked For Him

2010-03-10T20:53:00.004-06:00

I got an e-mail today from the New York Daily News, wishing to ask me about my experiences in life with (now former) Rep. Eric Massa of New York. This kind of surprised me, since I did at one time serve with a Lt. Eric Massa on the USS New Jersey, but rumor had it that he had died of cancer a number of years ago, evidently someone got it wrong, he recovered from it.

So, I did the wiki look up, and lo-and behold, my old division officer is now a disgraced former US Congressman. What a small world. Honestly, I never saw that coming. Seeing him in Congress; not a huge surprise, he was a great politician as a Naval Officer; which is a required skill for survival in the wardroom. It actually took a number of years for me to appreciate that he was a decent officer, he was one of my first Division officers and I didn't know good one's from bad ones back then.

Here's a sea story. After we returned to Long Beach, Ca. in 1984 we went into a "post shakedown availability", which is supposed to be a quick trip to the shipyard to fix problems discovered on a shakedown cruise. New Jersey's shakedown was supposed to be 3 months, but turned into an 11 month trip. So the yard period was a little more extensive than originally planned.

Lt. Massa was charged with checking out all of the "self help" equipment from the shipyard, mostly hoses, fittings, and pneumatic tools for removing paint and rust. About 5,000 individual items were checked out. Six months later every one of them was returned, down to the last hose clamp. The shipyard was astonished, normally they figured on losing 10-15 percent of the gear they checked out to the ship.

How did it all get back? Easy, Mr. Massa had a crew working for him (myself included) that wasn't allowed to leave at night until every item checked out that day was accounted for. If we worked to 7pm to find everything, fine, so long as when he checked the books it was all there. If he spot checked the hose bin, the numbers better have been right.

Someone gave us a hard time, suddenly there was an ugly visit from a ticked of officer, and we got the stuff back. Give us a hard time enough, you just didn't check anything out.

Disorganized people couldn't have pulled that off. For years after that experience I said if I ever needed anything big organized and run, he'd be the guy I would have called.

After dealing with his immediate relief, I realized that while many of us thought him the devil, the truth was, he knew what he was doing, and did it for a reason. The guy that took his place had no clue, or any reason for what he did most of the time.

Now I'm pretty surprised by the misconduct allegations, but then again, I was a seaman and he was a lieutenant back in '83 and '84, so I didn't hang out with him. Hell, he may have been a nut case on liberty, I don't know. He might have groped anything that moved, but it would surprise me. He didn't seem like that type of person.

So, Mr. Massa, or "JJ" as we called you behind your back, sorry you had such a short stay in Congress. Hope the allegations aren't true, and hope you land on your feet. You taught me quite a bit while I worked for you, and I think in the long run, it's Congress's loss.

Testing AndroBlogger

2010-03-09T14:43:00.001-06:00

I thought if I could post remotely I might start posting more. So I'm going to give AndroBlogger a try on my phone and see how it works.

Who knows maybe they'll let me live blog my stress tests on Thursday.

Testing, Testing, They'll be Testing Me!

2010-03-08T14:14:00.003-06:00

I know I haven't been posting much, but might change this week, since I'm not at work at all.

I wish it were a vacation, but instead it's a week of sick leave. I started some new medication week back, and had some less than wonderful reactions to it. I called the doctor, he called the ER, and I got to spend a night in the critical care ward at the VA hospital, trying to figure out if I had a heart attack, an asthma attack, or just a weird, and rare, reaction to the medication.

Now, for safety's sake, I'm sidelined for a week, and waiting for a new battery of tests to (hopefully) determine exactly what the hell happened.

Luckily, the Prez hasn't gotten his way with health care yet, so they don't have to go with the "best guess" method of treatment, they can actually do all the tests.

Military Tribunal For KSM?

2010-03-05T05:42:00.004-06:00

Looks like the White House is getting ready for another about face. Now it's on how to hold trials for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Remember the well planned and thought out plan to hold the trials in New York City? Well, since they weren't so well thought out, and not very popular, now the Administration is back to the idea it rejected before, Military Trials.

It's nice to see the Administration is going to be forced to do the right thing, even though they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Of course it also make the Obama administration, and the Justice Department under Holder look like they are completely clueless on how the real world works. But then, that's not a surprise to many of us.

Idiot On Parade

2010-02-23T12:09:00.004-06:00

Barack Obama considers himself the smartest man in the room most days. Of late, though, he's proving to be much less so, in fact, he's like an idiot on parade.

Why do I say this? Well the renewed health care push this week brought it back to the forefront, but he's had a slew of "wow, I'm dumber than a stump" moments lately.

Let's start with the KSM trial in New York. When it was announced the administration said it was a thoroughly vetted plan. Within days other politicians; especially the folks in New York; were asking "WTF, over?". Evidently 'well vetted' means running it around the dinner table with the kids but not asking the people in charge in New York.

Then we get to the budget. In two years he's going to run up more debt than George Bush managed in 7 of his 8 years in office. When folks freaked out about the $1.9 trillion in debt, what did he do? He appointed a panel to figure out how to reduce the debt. Here's an idea, Mr. Smart guy, DO NOT SPEND SO MUCH! Not rocket science, not even close. 3rd grade math, maybe, but rocket science, no.

So now we get to health care, where to start. The election of Scott Brown wrecked the filibuster proof majority he wasted in the Senate to try and get health care passed. The public disapproved of the Senate plan by a 2-1 majority. So, if you are the smartest man in the room, what do you do? You double down on the Senate plan by making it worse, the tax increases higher, the government intrusion more intrusive. And, since you are so smart, you release it 3 days BEFORE you are going to hold a "bi-partisan" meeting on the subject, which pretty much ruins any chance of saying the other guys won't play nice.

Oh wait, you aren't done being "smart" yet. You also tell the Senate to ram it through using the "Nuclear Option". For those who don't understand, that option is to use the budget reconciliation process to get a bill through the Senate on a straight majority vote. Technically, it's only to be used to pass a spending bill. So the Senate would tack health care reform onto a budget item it considers imperitive to get passed, and then use the reconciliation vote to do it.

If it sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's probably because in the years the GOP held the Senate there were occasional thoughts of using such an option to pass legislation. or get jammed nominees to the Senate floor.

This was always; not occasionally, but always; met by Democratic cries that it would destroy the Senate and what it stands for. Here's a nice LA Times op-ed piece on why the Nuclear Option is a bad idea; or at least was when the GOP threatened to use it. I'm wondering if they'd publish it today and replace each reference to judicial nominations with health care reform.

So, if you considered yourself the smartest man in the room, how much of the above would you try?

Too Late To Apologize

2010-02-21T07:38:00.002-06:00

Interesting history lesson in the form of a music video

Counting the Days

2010-02-20T14:45:00.006-06:00

Counting the days, getting channel fever, those were normal things when I was a sailor. Suddenly, I'm doing it again. This time it's for something different. I got tickets this morning for Eric Clapton's 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival. Glad I got online right away, they are sold out.

The proceeds help fund the Crossroads Centre, in Antigua, a rehab and education center Clapton's helped to found. Not only has he held the two previous festivals, but other concerts and auctions of his memorabilia to benefit their programs.

It's not until June 26th,(125 days) but I already can't wait. So, what does $121 bucks get you (after handling fees, taxes, etc.). How about a day with not just Clapton; who unlike The Who, still has it; but 30 of his closest friends. B.B. King, Albert Lee, Earl Klugh, Jeff Beck, Jimmie Vaughn, Robert Cray, and dozens more.

Robert Randolph, an awesome steel guitar player, is one of the players that I'm wanting to see badly. If you think the steel guitar is only for country music, check him out on the web, he can play any genre on it, and kick ass.

I'm also looking forward to Earl Klugh, who was one of the first "smooth jazz" players I listened to. A fellow sailor from years ago introduced me to both Klugh and George Benson's music and I realized that it's not just rock gods that can make a guitar sing.

Anyway, I'm stoked. Now I probably need to hit the gym so I can push the punks out of my way when I try and get front & center for the show.

What The Hell, Part 2

2010-02-12T19:37:00.002-06:00

Tragedy hit the Olympics before they started today, with the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, a luge rider from the country of Georgia. He came out of turn 16 and flipped off the track, hit a support column, and was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.

Supposedly; according to ABC news; the IOC suggested a higher side rail be installed to prevent such accidents, but it wasn't.

If you've seen the video, and I'm sorry I did, you can see that the posts could have been covered and padded, or even had a padded fence placed between them, and it may have saved a life, who knows.

What I do know has to do with seeing the video. Why is it all over the news? I understand pictures telling stories, sometimes they tell too much of it, and make it too graphic. I'd love to hear a network flack tell me why I needed to see the video of a man dying to understand a man died.

The stills of him on the side of the track, with rescue workers trying to save him was enough to show me he wasn't going to make it. I didn't need to see an 80 mph slide into a steel post to understand it.

I hope that other views follow my lead and e-mail or otherwise contact the networks to tell them that sometimes there is such a thing as "too much information", and this was a case of it.

What the Hell?

2010-02-10T06:39:00.002-06:00

So, no only did I get about a foot of snow at my place, but I find out that Illinois also had a magnitude 4.3 earthquake last night. Guess the Gods are angry at Illinois, or maybe it's global warming.

What ever it is, Lake Michigan isn't big enough for Tsunami's, is it?

The President is Stealing My Stuff

2010-02-06T21:08:00.003-06:00

President Obama is getting lots of laughs for his comment about "snowmaggedon" hitting Washington DC last night and today, to the tune of about 2.5 feet of the white stuff.

I guess he's been reading my blog for a while, since I used the phrase here in 2008. (http://crazypolitics.blogspot.com/2008/12/snow-maggedon-08.html). That's okay, Mr. Prez, I didn't trademark it or anything.

I miss my days in Virginia sometimes, but now when I see them getting hammered with snow like this. They are ill equipped to deal with it, and the people can't drive in it.

Now, as payback for laughing about DC this weekend, I just got bleeped on my phone with not 1, but 2 "Special Weather Statements" the first says between Monday and Tuesday I should see between 6-11 inches of snow. Then, since I live close to Lake Michigan, another "several" inches of lake effect snow through Wednesday. Yahoo.

Again, it probably won't bug me too much. I can deal with driving in it, have a shovel and snow thrower. However, the customer I'm handling Monday and Tuesday has a bunch of people flying in from Sunnyvale, Ca. for the week. They should have a ton of fun dealing with it. Hope the hotel isn't far from the plant.

If Canadian Health Care is So Good

2010-02-02T13:49:00.003-06:00

So, if the Canadian single payer health care system is so good, could someone please explain why the Premier (governor in US terms) of New Foundland, Danny Williams, is coming to the US to have his heart worked on? And why isn't the procedure he's having done available in his province?

And why won't he say what it is, and why won't anyone say if whatever it is can even be done in his country.

This is, by the way, the second high profile "single payer refugee" in the last few months. Johnny Hallyday, "The French Elvis" was flown from France to the US in December after they goofed on his heart surgery there.

For the folks that keep telling me single payer is better, please explain why the folks who need serious care keep coming to the US to get it, instead of one of the bastions of medical fairness. So if we adopt that type of system, then where will you go when you can't get what you need here?

Tighten Your Belts

2010-02-02T05:26:00.002-06:00

Remember last week when the President told us DC had to tighten their belts, and feel the pain of the rest of us.

He lied.

He's taken his belt off, put on a pair of over sized sweat pants, and is doing a tour of the DC area All You Can Eat buffets.

That wasn't his only less than intellectually honest statement concerning his budget. In trying to explain away $1.56 Trillion in debt, Mr. Obama claims that he inherited a $1 trillion deficit. That's true, except the real "long term" deficit was about $560 in Bush's last budget. The rest was one time bank and auto bailout money.

Obama doubled down on that in his first budget, with $787 billion (now $850B) in stimulus money to come up with a $1.43 trillion dollar deficit for FY 2010, or a real deficit of about $640B. The 2011 budget he has proposed now has nearly $1.6 trillion in debt, yet no "one shot" stimulus type budget buster. So in just 3 fiscal years he's found a way to just about triple the real deficit.

But it's not just that deficit increase, included in that budget is tax increase averaging over $110 billion per year, meaning he's accelerating spending even faster than it looks like when you just see the raw numbers.

Most folks with any common sense would look at the results of the bail out era and realize that the bailouts and stimulus haven't worked. Stabilizing automakers and banks was supposed to trickle down to other manufacturers and employers, and make money available for hiring. Yet unemployment is up about 40% since we went Kenysian on the economy. Another huge dose of federal spending isn't going to fix that. It will make it worse.

The stimulus hasn't created private sector jobs, it's expanded government jobs, which just means the government needs more money to satisfy itself. Most of those jobs are at the state and local level, so after you get the whammy of new federal spending, your state and local taxes will have to go up to pay for those jobs no longer funded by the feds.

The tax increases are targeted directly at the group that creates self sustaining private sector jobs. 75% of the people who make over $200,000 a year are self employed as Type S corporations, small businesses. What do those folks do when they see an extra $8-10K a year in taxes? They either don't hire more people; and unemployment stays high; don't buy new equipment for their business; which impacts other businesses; or just shut down because the tax increases don't make running their own business worthwhile anymore.

The President's budget has a $5000 tax credit for hiring people, but in the small business world it will mean nothing, it won't cover the tax increases in the budget, or come close to the expenses of a new employee in most businesses. Large corporations might benefit some from it, but it will be negligible for them, also. The place I'm working this week found it cheaper to cut two full time jobs and have the rest of the folks in that group work four hours of overtime a week. I doubt a $5K tax credit would have kept those two on the job.

Even if those seeing the increases do as the Kenysians would like to think, and just take it out of their own pocket, it still has an impact. If you remove $150 from my wallet every week how do I adjust? Well, I probably go out to dinner 2 less times per week and kill a trip to the book store.

So what I've really done is taken that money away from other businesses. Multiply that by a few million people and all of the sudden it means unemployed waiters, waitresses, bus boys and cooks and clerks. As those restaurants and other businesses close it means less local tax income, since empty commercial real estate pays a lower rate than property generating income.

Or maybe they just won't invest as much, which means that the $110 billion in taxes doesn't go into the markets, keeping them lower, and every one's 401K suffers.

Remind me again why these tax increases are going to help.

I Will Now Be Call RINO

2010-01-31T21:35:00.001-06:00

I'm sure after reading this post, more than a few people will put me in the group known as RINO's; Republican In Name Only. That's fine, political labels bug me anyway.

There is a hubbub in Wisconsin this week. The State has decided that "abstinence only" sex education can't be taught. Instead, the legislature on near party line votes in both chambers has decided that sex education has to include, well, sex. Including diseases, prevention and (gasp!) contraception.

This has the far right side of the Republican party up in arms. Their minor problem with it is the loss of local control on curriculum. The major problem is the idea of teaching sex as part of sex education. They believe that's best left to the parents, and in a perfect world, I'd agree with them. Except we aren't in anything near a perfect world. We're far from it.

Two of Wisconsin;s talking heads of the right, Charlie Sykes and James T. Harris are both upset about the decision. I agree with most of what they say most of the time, but believe they've chosen a stupid fight on this issue that does nothing to advance the real issues the GOP should be dealing with.

Here's my thought on it. I spent a lot of years of my life dealing with young adults with no concept of responsible sex, safe sex, or the emotional consequences of sex. These young adults came from all walks of life and socio-economic backgrounds. Some were privately schooled, some home schooled, most public schooled. Some had good two parent families, some were orphans.

If "parents teaching sex ed" is such a great idea, probably 70% of the kids I dealt with would have had an idea what was going on, and some reasonable sense of how to deal with such situations. The truth was, probably less than 25% had a clue. Most were educated, in the words of my best friends Dad growing up, "on the street corner, like me". Not the best place to be taught.

To the parents who cry they don't want the schools teaching their kids things they don't believe in, here's my answer. Then unteach them. The same way you (hopefully) did when they watched another kid throw a fit and get what they wanted at the store.

This might be uncomfortable, you might have to ask the kids to put down their cell and quit texting for a few minutes, or turn off the X-Box and TV. We did it by sitting down to dinner, and until my kids were done with school, playing a game called "what did you learn", and we started out with 1st period and went through the end of each of their days. When we had questions about something, we asked. When they had a question about something at school, they asked us.

When our kids started talking to us about other people being sexually active, we explained what we thought of the subject, and what we thought was acceptable, and why. And no, it wasn't usually a comfortable conversation to anyone. But everyone understood the expectations in the family.

It also made for much more open conversations with our kids when they thought they were ready for sex. Sure, there was some embarrassment, but they weren't afraid to talk to us. One of the things I learned dealing with thousands of young adults was that abstinence only education generally drummed in the idea that anything but was failure, and should cause shame, it made them less likely to seek advice or help.

So, Cheeseheads, be unhappy if you must, about your legislatures recent decisions. However, and more importantly, be parents. Explain what you expect and why, and keep a dialogue open with your kids. It will be much more successful than anything they learn in school.

The Joker Is In DC

2010-01-30T13:37:00.001-06:00

The Joker has taken over DC. Well, not really, it's just President Obama. He touted the {false} 5.7% increase in GDP last quarter as a good start to recovery. He failed to acknowledge that the growth occurred at the wholesale level, with manufacturers cleaning out their warehouses on the cheap to fatten their end of year bottom lines. Retail sales, and wages, housing sales and auto sales weren't up enough for the 5.7% to be a real indicator of recovery.

After talking about the increase in GDP he went into comedian mode, talking about how cutting the deficit was as important as growth in our recovery. He's correct, but what's funny is he's no proposing anything that will do it.

His first proposal, offered up right before the State of the Union address is a "discretionary spending" freeze that only affects about 1/2 of discretionary spending, and only adds up to about 1% of his projected budget deficit.

His second statement is that the 1990's "Pay-Go" program has to be brought back. Funny, Mr. President, but your party promised us that 3 years ago when they were sworn in as the leaders in Congress. It supposedly happened, too, except that it's got so many holes in it Swiss Cheese is jealous. Now evidently they really mean they are going to raise taxes cut some spending to pay for every new program. Starting in 2011, probably, with the programs passed in 2010.

Finally, the toothless "Presidential Commission" on spending cuts, that would come up with ways to trim the deficit and present them to Congress; where by law, they can have no force, and be ignored.

As Charlie Sykes often says, when you are a politician, and want to look like you are doing something about a problem, you appoint commission.

The original idea was a bipartisan Congressional group, that would have presented the cuts and taxes increases as an up or down vote bill to both chambers, with no changes. Like the base closing commissions of the 1990's. The problem was Democrats didn't want to go on record acknowledging that Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable, and the GOP didn't want to give bipartisan cover to huge tax increases. So that idea died in the Senate.

The truth is that if the deficit is to be reduced even to George W. Bush levels social programs are going to have to be part of the equation, they are the majority of the budget at this point. There will also have to some targeted tax increases, also. Who knows, maybe the 40% of filers who pay a negative income tax (they get more back than they pay) will have to see their ~~tax refunds~~ welfare checks reduced a little bit by trimming the generous Earned Income Tax Credit.

If the President is serious, he'll have to come up with a new budget for FY 2011, one without 1.4 trillion in red ink. At least if he wants anyone to believe he's serious. Because you have to ask yourself, if 2009's 1.3 trillion deficit was due to the $850 billion dollar stimulus, why does 2010, without a stimulus have a bigger deficit? Where'd all that money go this year?

What If

2010-01-30T07:18:00.000-06:00

The World Economic Forum is going on in Davos again. This time around the world is telling bankers to expect regulation, and lots of it, and soon. The bankers engaged the regulators, and were allowed to provide input, though that is probably meaningless, considering Barney Frank's attitude at the conference.

One of the biggest things guys like Frank would like to do is once again separate commercial and investment banking from each other. In the world according to Barney, the entire financial crisis was created because banks both lend money for housing (commercial enterprise) then package those loans as mortgage backed derivatives (investment banking) and sell them.

What Barney refuses to admit, or see, is that it wasn't the derivatives that brought down the market, it was the mortgages themselves, made easy by the rules he insisted on for mortgage lenders. When you push for regulations that make zero down mortgages, interest only payments, etc. the norm, you end up with a skewed market, that will crash.

What if Barney decided that the same capital reserve standards had to apply to government entities as the Davos crowd is pushing for banks? Would the US government be able to meet that standard considering it has 10 trillion in outstanding debt?

What if the bankers say "Okay", and just jump out of markets considered risky? Will Frank, Obama and the European leaders who are pushing these regulations admit the regulations might be the problem when capital sources start drying up for businesses? We've already seen the start of that, as banks are much less willing to lend right now. When they are told to be even more stringent in their investment standards do regulators really think that suddenly money will flow?

The proposed regulations will help prevent another economic collapse. That's because they'll prevent an economic recovery of any scale, and the folks pushing the regulations will lament they don't understand why.

If you'd like my cynical view of why the current US government and European governments want more, and very heavy handed regulation, it's because they want to be the major sources of capital, not the banks. It's much easier for governments to be the hero's, and pick the winners and losers when they don't have to worry about pesky free markets to make decisions.

Want an example? Green energy products. The markets have been slow to invest in them because they don't pay back the investment quickly, if at all. Solar cells, wind turbines and fuel cells are all great sources of clean energy, the problem; as real investors note; is that you can't sell them at a price that makes a reasonable profit, so they don't invest.

Governments chastise them for not investing in such a worthwhile endeavor, and ignore the fiscal facts of the industry. So then governments get to play king makers in the industry, and use it as a reason to say the markets don't work.

Take your Fusion hybrid as an example, Ford loses money on every unit it sells. But they get credits from the government for selling them, in the form of tax breaks and access to federal money to build the plants.

The markets actually work fine. As soon as someone comes up with a hybrid or all electric car, or fuel cell for the home that is profitable, and priced where it can be successfully marketed, they'll be all over it. Until then all but a few altruistic venture capitalists will opt out.

Note to the President

2010-01-29T13:48:00.001-06:00

President Obama met with the GOP today, and was angry at them because they've opposed his initiatives. For the most part they've had good reason to oppose them, they aren't the ideals they were elected to congress to support.

Quick note, Prez, maybe you should get your own party in order before you start whining about the "opposition party" opposing you. You've had a year with a super majority in the Senate, and a big majority in the House, yet you've gotten nothing of consequence passed. You can't get your own party behind your ideas, and you are angry the other party isn't supporting them?

You are angry the GOP wouldn't support you on health care reform? They offered over 400 amendments between the two chambers, every one of which was shot down on a party line vote. They attempted to work with your party, your congressional leaders would have none of it. And now they have no bill. Mr. President, when you can't get a single RINO in the Senate to vote on your bill, you know it's too far to the left.

You are angry they wouldn't support the stimulus? CBO now says the bill will cost 850 billion dollars, not 787 billion, and you've had to change accounting methods three times to make it look like it's creating jobs. Yet every independent study so far says it hasn't. Maybe they understood that the bill wasn't about jobs, and that's why they didn't support it.

You don't like extending the Bush tax cuts because "billionaires don't need tax breaks". Here's the truth, Mr. Obama, when rich folks get a tax cut they invest it, providing the capital for other businesses to expand and create jobs. They don't stuff it in mattresses or lock it in a basement to count nightly. Venture capital doesn't materialize out of thin air, it's money that the investor class uses to take a chance on some small start up becoming the next Oracle or IBM. When you confiscate more of that money, that's less start ups that have a chance to suceed.

When you give the same amount to a group of a hundred million people the money is watered down. Some buy things which stimulates the economy, but as was seen last time, most paid their bills which doesn't do the same thing as tossing a hundred million bucks to businesses.

Haloscan Gone

2010-01-29T13:27:00.002-06:00

Haloscan is going away February 13th, so I've decided to eliminate it today, lest I forget in a few weeks. They are offering a switch to the new Echo platform for comments, but I really don't feel like spending $12 a year on a blog that I forget to post to regularly.

The downside is that all the Haloscan comments will be unavailable, the upside is, well, no confusion on which comment section to use, for the 3 people that still occasionally comment.

Its Election Time In Illinois

2010-01-29T07:58:00.000-06:00

So last week I said I was going to vote for Andy McKenna in the GOP primary for Governor of Illinois. Then this morning I get an e-mail from John Ruberry; The Marathon Pundit; who's a much better political commentator than myself, telling me I should check out this blog post of his.

Columnist: Andy McKenna swipes Notre Dame alumni data which links to a much larger story at The Observer . Basically some McKenna campaign folks circumvented some rules at the ND Alumni Association, and got most of their alumni e-mail addresses and used them to solicit for his campaign.

Is this enough to change my vote? I'm not quite sure yet, but I will say I'm glad I didn't stop at the early voting office here in town earlier this week like I had intended.

I will say this, it does make me wonder. Illinois has a (well deserved) reputation for it's rough and tumble politics, and the less than ethical conduct of it's officials. If McKenna wants to be seen as the outsider; even though he headed the state GOP; he needs to conduct himself, and have his staff and volunteers conduct themselves in a manner that is beyond reproach. Anything that looks like "the same old Illinois politics" isn't a good thing.

Senate Says No

2010-01-26T06:02:00.002-06:00

The Obama strategy of bipartisanship is starting to make itself a little more clear. The President wants the GOP to be no where near a room where decisions are made on what he thinks will be popular programs and initiatives, but if it's going to be something unpopular, or require an unpopular action, he'd like the cover of bipartisan support.

That was the idea behind the Deficit Reduction Task force. It was to be made up of a group of Senators and Congressmen from both parties, slightly weight to the Democrats and their majority. The group would come up with a list of budget fixing ideas, vote on them with a bare majority needed to pass the group, then present them to Congress as a "bipartisan fix".

The reason for the task force is easy, the Democrats, specifically the President, want the cover of bipartisanship before they present a laundry list of tax increases they believe are necessary to fix the budget.

The President's problem is that the Senate Republicans saw through that smokescreen and said no, and probably shockingly to the President, the left is balking also. It seems they don't want the GOP involved in any negotiations on how to fix Social Security and Medicare, which have to be on the table to fix the budget.

Welcome to reality Mr. President, and your lack of gravitas in the Congressional arena is beginning to show. It appears that the reality that you can't freeze discretionary spending and balance a budget that's off by a trillion bucks has set in. Now, faced with a tough choice on how to do it, instead of making a decision and presenting it, you've once again tried to defer to others, this time though, they aren't so willing to do your bidding.

The truth is health care reform is going to seem like a walk in the park compared to fixing the structural imbalance in our budgets. While Pelosi and Reid are more than happy to be your point folks on health care, that's because that project can be spun as a positive, even with it's tax increases.

Fixing the budget, though, can't be spun that way. Tough cuts have to happen, and tax increases, especially the payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security, will probably have to be part of the equation. Along with them is a likely cut of some sort in benefits. Pelosi and Reid can already see the commercials come election time, and don't like them, so they won't be giving you the cover you want.

So what should the President do? Well, Wednesday he's got the bully pulpit of his State of the Union address. That would be a good place to challenge Congress to come up with a plan for fixing the budget. His proposed freezes starting in 2011 are a nice gesture, but they aren't enough to do any real good. He should propose a few specific cuts in the budget as places to start.

My guess is he won't. Mr. Obama has proven one thing his first year in office, when it comes to talking he's got a huge game. When it comes to leading, making decisions, and getting the ball rolling in the right direction, he can't do it, and won't be pushed into it.

Ted Thompson Validated

2010-01-24T22:20:00.005-06:00

Once again Brett Favre has validated Ted Thompson's decision to move on without him. Last year he did it by throwing 22 picks for the Jets, and refusing to sit when his arm was so bad he couldn't hit easy throws.

Tonight, once again, he threw away his teams chance at a Super Bowl with an ill advised pass at the worst possible moment in the Conference Championship. It's deja vu all over again. The good thing, he did it to the Vikings this time. The better thing, he played an entire season looking like anyone but the guy who tosses away big games, only to rip their hearts out tonight.

Before the game he said he knew what he was doing after this year, but wouldn't say. After the game he wouldn't talk to reporters. But Jay Glazer noted that "the entire Vikings locker room" believes that Favre is done.

If he wasn't before the game, I'm pretty sure he was after.

Bye Bye Brett. Enjoy the tractor.

Adam or Andy

2010-01-23T22:18:00.002-06:00

It's primary election time here in the Land of Lincoln. Hard not to notice by the number of increasingly annoying ads being aired. With the latest SCOTUS ruling, that will get even worse this fall.

So now the question comes up, who do I vote for in the primary for Governor? Well, it won't be a Democrat. That party has totally screwed up this state, and I'd be inclined to vote for the Communist candidate in the general election over any of the state's Democratic contenders.

Then when I started looking at the GOP candidates I noticed there are really only two who aren't political insiders who've been hanging around Springfield so long they forget there is anywhere else in the state.

So my choice has come down to Adam Andrzejewski or Andy McKenna. Both are business people, not career politicians, which is a point for each. The fact my middle name is Andrew has nothing to do with those two being the finalists for my vote.

Both have decent plans for curbing state spending, auditing where our money currently goes, and trying not to raise taxes to fix our budget mess.

Both want more accountability from Springfield, more transparency on where our money is going. Andrzejewski wins that fight with his "Every Dime Online, In Real Time" pledge, though I wonder if that will be feasible in a reasonable amount of time.

McKenna's idea to start with the recent Auditor General report for consolidation of programs, and using that report to weed out the unknown programs; those that the head of the agencies couldn't identify; sound like a faster way to getting some of the budget mess solved than a forensic audit. Though that audit is probably necessary, it won't do much to take care of the $10 billion deficit we are currently facing.

Another plus for both is that neither seems to be fixated on Chicago first, then the rest of the state, a major problem with the other party. Yes, Chicago is the first city of the state, but the fact is letting the Rockford's and Peoria of Illinois rot while the legislature debates Chicago issues isn't the way to get the whole state moving.

Taxes are going to be a tough issue. All of the Democrats claim that the only solution to our budget woes is a tax increase. All the Republicans claim it can be fixed without them. I'm not sure that is true, but I think that it should be the last resort. Pat Quinn's idea of a 50% increase is crazy, if the budget is that badly messed up they need to figure out a way to get closer to their means, as opposed to raising taxes that high.

Property taxes are something else that has to be addressed. Unfortunately, while all the candidates claim they will do something about them, the real solution to those problems is going to be local. Excessive numbers of local taxing bodies makes it almost impossible to navigate a tax bill, or figure out how to reduce it. Local government consolidation is probably the most logical choice, starting with schools, park districts and the elimination of townships as taxing bodies.

One thing they could do in Springfield that would help both at the state and local levels would be to change the formula for how State guaranteed pensions are calculated. No where other than government can you sell back all your accrued vacation and sick days and have that counted as salary for determining a pension. Most companies can't afford to allow those days to be carried over more than a year or two because of tax implications.

Secondly, change the retirement ages for teachers and public employees (except firefighters and cops) to 65. If they want to retire after 30 years at 55 and collect a pension, fashion it like Social Security, and pay 60% at that age, 80% at age 60, and 100% of the eligible amount at 65.

Sorry for drifting, back to who will I vote for? Probably Andy McKenna, as of today. I think of the two his life experience has better prepared him to be the Governor, I also think Matt Murphy as Lt. Governor is a good choice. He has enough experience in Springfield to be helpful, but no so much that he's forgotten the real world.

Adam, I think is still a bit too young, and as the guy in DC is proving, novices aren't the best choices in tough times. However, if he does lose the primary I hope he stays involved in Illinois politics and keeps shining the light of openness on Springfield.

Can Health Care Reform Be Saved?

2010-01-23T14:23:00.001-06:00

If you regularly read my irregular blog posts, you are probably wondering about this one, considering the title. I've written a number of things critical of what's going on in Congress concerning health care reform, most of it unflattering to Congress.

The truth is, we do need some reform, which I've occasionally mentioned. What we didn't need was the House's wholesale take over, or the Senate's hodge-podge of payoffs and hush money to get anything passed. We need some common sense things done.

Now that political reality has set in for Nancy Pelosi, it might be possible. Tuesday night she was telling us that Scott Brown's election did nothing to change what was going to happen. Then she talked to her caucus and pronounced the Senate version of health care reform dead in the House. That was really the only way they were getting anything to the President's desk before his State of the Union address.

So, how do they save Health Care Reform? The best way would be to get 4 Senators and 4 Congressmen from each party together and work on ideas they can all agree on. Here's a few that shouldn't cause too much pain.

1. Portability. Decouple health care from the job, and to the person. Allow employers to pay for it if you wish, but have the insurance follow the person.

The "insurance exchange" idea would actually work for this. Employers buy from the exchange, in the employee's name. When they leave the company the insurance goes with them. The next employer can pick up the tab, if they wish, or the individual can do it on their own.

2. Taxes. Give employees the same break as employers when it comes to paying for health insurance. It's a crazy thing that if I get my own insurance unless I meet a threshold I get no tax break, but if my boss pays he gets a big one. Now if the person from example 1 decides to leave to start their own business, they aren't penalized for buying their own insurance.

3. National coverage standards. Right now we have 50 states with 50 different coverage standards. A minimum coverage policy in Kentucky is about 400% less than in New York. Set a national standard for coverage, so that insurance isn't locked into what state you are living in. We've become mobile, our insurance should be too.

4. Pre-existing conditions. They should be covered. The problem with both the House and Senate versions is that they want to exist in a fantasy world where your pre-existing condition shouldn't mean you pay more for coverage. It's funny that two bodies will one day lecture the banking industry about their fiscal irresponsibility for getting into hedge funds, and the next chastise insurers for charging more to people who it costs more to service.

5. Tort Reform. This gets the Democrats skin crawling, because trial lawyers are one of their biggest donor groups. The truth is that there needs to be some reform. A basic one that would be hard to vote against would be limiting the amount the lawyers in malpractice cases can be paid. Democrats would throw a hissy fit, but the truth is, if it's okay to limit bankers pay and bonuses, as they'd like to do, why not lawyers?

Mandatory arbitration in front of a panel of experts would also be a nice spot to start. Lawyers would be less likely to file frivolous malpractice suits if a group of doctors were going to hear the case first, instead of a jury of laymen. Make the results eligible for appeal to a judge and jury, but also make the panel's findings usable as evidence.

6. Uniformity of paperwork. Want to have fun, go to a doctors office with two different insurance policies. Watch the admin folks twitch as they try and figure out which is primary, which is secondary, and what form to use for each.
Want a headache? Have them get it wrong.

Insurance companies should be able to come up with an industry wide standard for claims forms, so that a doctor or clinic doesn't need two file cabinets and an extra person to chase paper. A standard system for policy numbers, similar to the VIN on your car would also be helpful. Then it would be pretty easy to develop software that works reliably for any companies claim.

None of this is really rocket science, and except the argument you'll get over tort reform, none of it is horribly controversial. However, it would all lower costs, make insurance easier to get and keep, and result in a happier, probably healthier public.

Biting Dogs?

2010-01-20T10:25:00.004-06:00

So, after last nights earthquake in Massachusetts, one has to start wondering if the block of "Blue Dog Democrats" will finally find their teeth.

The Blue Dogs are supposed to be the fiscally conservative wing of the Democrats, especially in the House. However, what they've proven to be is an easily bought off group who has let every spending bill go through in exchange for some kibbles and bits.

Last night, however, might have provided the impetus for them to actually grow some teeth and stand up to Nancy Pelosi. Unlike Martha Coakley, who lost in a state that has been solidly Democratic since 1972, the Blue Dogs mostly come from conservative districts and got their jobs promising the fiscal conservatism that Republicans forgot about from 2002-2006. So for them, last night has to be a shocker, and a wake up call. If they want to keep their seats, they may well have to dump Pelosi's ideas on health care and demand a true bipartisan effort.

The idea of "ping ponging" an unabridged Senate health care bill through the House to get it to Obama's desk is something that the Blue Dogs should resist, if they want to stay in office come November. Since Pelosi will have no ability to ~~bribe for votes~~ offer amendments to gain favor with them, they are now in control of the health care debate, if they wish to be.

As the leadership in their party spends the next few days to a week deciding what to do with ObamaCare, it will become evident to the rest of us what is more important to that leadership, maintaining their majorities in 2011, or getting an unpopular bill passed.

All Options Except

2010-01-19T20:26:00.003-06:00

So, with it looking more and more like the GOP will take the Senate seat held by Teddy Kennedy for 47 years the Democrats are discussing all of their options to get their health care bill passed.

They are discussing the House passing an unchanged Senate bill so that there is no more voting in the Senate. They are discussing ways to eliminate the filibuster so that it can't be used. The Nuclear Option of passing all changes as "budget reconciliations" has been brought up.

So what option aren't they talking about? The one that Candidate Barack Obama promised, working with both sides to come up with workable legislation.

You would think that when your landmark legislation becomes the centerpiece of an election battle in a state where your party's registered voters outnumber the opposition 3-1 and you lose, that maybe that would be a sign. Well, you would unless you are a Democratic leader in either chamber in DC. In that case you put your head in the sand, and pretend that something else is the reason you got beaten.

Now, if the Democrats really want to hold their majorities come November, what they might want to do is start doing what their leader campaigned on. Hell, what they claimed would happen in 2006. Start working across the isle. If they decide that instead of doing what is becoming glaringly obvious as the will of the people, and ramrod their bill through with some hocus pocus sleight of hand they will pay with more than one seat come November.

More Stimulus Hijinks

2010-01-12T21:06:00.005-06:00

Well, now that they've been called out numerous times on the bogus jobs numbers from the $787 billion stimulus package, the White House has dropped all pretense of trying to get good numbers for jobs that are supposedly created or saved by the deal.

Now, instead, anyone who uses stimulus money to pay salaries can count all of those salaries as jobs created or saved.

Wait, it gets better, give employees a raise with stimulus cash? Those are "created or saved" jobs too.

Hold it, I'm not through yet. Did you report the employee job as saved last quarter? Did you get more stimulus money this quarter? You can report the job as saved again!!

If you think I'm joking here's the link to the article on Yahoo News about it. This had to be true, no one is good enough to make this crap up.

Ignorant Idiots

2010-01-11T21:23:00.000-06:00

I got a funny comment today from a post that's 5 months old. Obviously a guy calling himself "LongliveGOP" wasn't very happy about my skewering of a few of Adam Andrzejewski's campaign workers.

His comment?

If your ignorant ass would stop and read what Adam is about you wouldnt think that way. Man some people can just be assholes...

Now, we each are entitled to our opinions, unlike my new favorite reader, I like to base mine on fact. First, I'm not an asshole, however, I do have a circumcision scar on my neck.

I'm guessing he googled or binged Adam's name, and came across that entry. He probably didn't bother to go back to the search results, and find the second post from that day entitled "Apology Accepted" where I stated that I had gone back and read a number of his positions, and agreed with many of them, but still disagreed with the conduct of one of his workers.

So, LongLiveGOP, today's lesson is before you decided to call someone an ignorant ass for something, maybe, just maybe, you should get all of your facts. Otherwise you might look like, well, an ignorant ass.

/bullypulpit

Even Stewart is Laughing At Him

2010-01-09T07:43:00.004-06:00

A lot of conservatives hated Jon Stewart during the Bush years, thinking him a tool of the left. Now, that may be changing. He's actually proving to be what he's always purported himself to be, a topical humorist.

Much to the chagrin of the left, over the last year he's done what good humorists do, he turned his sights on the guy who's currently in office. He's becoming the anti-Bill Maher, a guy who can't let go of the past, and refuses to believe the current President has any flaws.

Need a good laugh, check out this recent clip from Jon's "Daily Show", where he beats down the Prez on his CSPAN promise. He still gets a few jabs in at the last guy, but the premise of the clip is obvious.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

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http://www.thedailyshow.com/

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Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Calling Out The Democrats

2010-01-06T05:33:00.002-06:00

Remember about 15 months or so ago, when "Candidate Obama" promised all of us that the health care debate was going to be televised on CSPAN?

Well, if you've paid attention the last few days you know that instead, the Democrats have decided to hold leadership only meetings with members of only their party to come up with the "conference committee" bill to reconcile the House and Senate differences.

Now someone is complaining. Who? The CEO of CSPAN. He wants the negotiations televised, just like Mr. Obama said they would be.

Jack Tapper at ABC has a great piece up explaining the whole thing.

(edit) Also, WSJ has a nice piece about how this move by the Democrats is probably going to help Tom DeLay's image more than it will give the public confidence in the Democrats.

If you want to know where my money is, I'd put it on not seeing any negotiations on CSPAN. In fact, there is a better chance of Brian Lamb, the CEO being investigated by Congress, than Congress actually being transparent on this.

Happy New Year

2010-01-02T07:24:00.002-06:00

Sorry I'm late saying "Happy New Year!", but it was a strange holiday around here.

The Lovely Wife went in for a minor procedure on New Years Eve, so instead of spending the night partying and whooping up the occasion, I spent it visiting her in the hospital, and getting an education on hemoglobin levels.

The procedure when well and should take care of the issues it was performed for, however, Lovely one had an issue with blood counts and had to receive 3 units before they'd let her go home.

Here's hoping that 2010 is a great year for all. May it be better than 2009, and bring health, happiness and fulfillment to everyone.

Wither the Public Option

2009-12-28T05:23:00.001-06:00

House Democrats are already conceding that the public option will have to die to get the Senate to pass a final version of health care reform.

1-The public option had two purposes, the first was the (supposedly) create more competition for insurance companies, because the 1200 or so already selling health insurance don't have enough.

2-The more covert purpose, was to get enough people enrolled to make it a quasi universal plan. That was Joe Lieberman's objection to it.

So if number 1 is off the table, how does the government get to number 2? That's actually pretty easy. The choke hold of regulation. The Senate version of health care reform puts so many new regulations, from administrative overhead restrictions to documentation and litigation that they hope to drive insurance companies out of business.

Maine has already driven the vast majority of insurers out of the state with their Dirigo plan. Regulation on "for profit" insurers has left the state with it's own insurance (who's cost has gone up about 175% faster than anticipated) and a few not for profits selling policies.

My guess (educated, but without insider info) is that the conference bill that comes to the House and Senate will be designed to drive for profit insurers and the"non-protected" (see Longshoremen) classes out of the insurance business by making it nearly impossible to sell insurance without losing the proverbial shirt.

After a few years of States seeing their medicaid rolls (except Nebraska, the feds will pay for theirs) swell with those who's private insurers stop writing policies, the States will scream for DC to fix a new "national health care crisis" that is of Washington's own making.

Keep in mind, most of the legislation that's supposed to help the consumer doesn't go into effect until the law is on the books for 3 years. The taxes and regulations start immediately. This gives Congress the ability to say that insurers aren't doing their part before they are actually required to do anything, and insurers will most certainly have to look for ways to save money in that three year period.

There is a problem with the waiting period, though. The Democrats have to hope they hold onto enough seats, preferably majorities, in both Houses to make it possible to bring up the public option down the road as the "savior of the masses".

The GOP regaining control of either house would probably kill that idea in it's track, and require (gasp!) meaningful reform to be negotiated between both parties. Who knows, maybe then the President would have to hold true on his promise to televise the negotiations on C-SPAN so everyone could see what's going on.

Dear Senator Burris

2009-12-22T21:27:00.002-06:00

I've sent the following to Senator Burris.

Mr. Burris,
A month or so ago you informed your senate collegues that you'd vote no on any health care reform legislation that didn't contain a public option.

This week you've gone back on that promise. Which isn't a surprise to most of us.

What I'd like to know is what was the pay off for Illinois? The Senate is tossing around $100 million dollar bribes left and right for yes votes on this bill, so I'd like to know what Illinois got that was good enough for you to go back on your principles.

I'm going to be very disappointed if you didn't hold your vote for some kings ransom for our state, too.

_____________________________________________________________

I'm pretty sure he got nothing for his vote. He has no principles, and doesn't seem smart enough to get one of the $100 million dollar bribes that Harry Reid was giving out.

He'll probably claim Gitmo North is our gift from the Senate for his vote.

CTA Rides Cost Taxpayers $6-$9 Per Rider

2009-12-06T05:53:00.000-06:00

CTA: Rides cost $7-$9.90, but agency makes about 98 cents for each -- chicagotribune.com

Above is the headline from the Tribune. My headline is the taxpayer cost to subsidize the CTA riders. While there is a regional taxing authority for the CTA, that money doesn't just come from there. As we've seen repeatedly over the last few years, Springfield is kicking more and more money each year into the CTA coffers to keep drastic route cuts and fare increases from happening.

That means if you live downstate and the state highway in your area is full of potholes, it's possible the money to fix it is instead being used to subsidize the CTA service.

Where does all the money to CTA go? According to the Tribune article and CTA 65% goes to wages. The white collar workers at CTA are getting ready for their fourth consectutive year without a pay raise, and will get 18 unpaid furlough days this year; again. The union workers on the other hand gets 3-4% per year in raises, and refuses any furlough days.

In fairness, the union workers in their last contract did have to increase their own pension contributions and insurance payments. My guess is it comes no where close to what their white collar co-workers are enduring. It should.

If the union cries poverty, please laugh heartily at them. The average wage for a bus driver come out to $57,000 a year before benefits, $55,000 for a train operator, don't forget, it goes up next year by 3.5 percent.

Governor Quinn just got CTA enough cash to forestall some serious fare hikes over the next couple of years, but not enough to stop the service cuts planned for January. Maybe some layoffs are necessary for the CTA's union members to realize that they are part of the problem and need to help with the solution.

Unemployment Smoke and Mirrors

2009-12-05T21:59:00.002-06:00

I got my laugh this week over the President crowing about the unemployment rate dropping to 10% for November. First, he sold us a $787 billion 'economic stimulus package' that said unemployment wouldn't go over 8% if we spent that money.

The second reason I laugh is that November and December unemployment numbers are generally lower than any two months of the year, as retailers hire seasonal help for their holiday sales.

If you want a truer reflection of unemployment, check the numbers released the first week of February, when the seasonal workers are gone. My guess is you'll see 10.5% for January.

Hypocrisy

2009-12-03T05:41:00.002-06:00

Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online has an excellent editorial in today's Chicago Tribune on the intellectual hypocrisy of the folks currently in charge.

His idea of the intellectual hypocrisy of the government is based on a JP Morgan chart, which shows the private sector experience of the President's appointees.

As you can see from the chart, Obama's cabinet doesn't fall a little short of others in "real world" experience, but about 2/3 short of previous least experienced cabinet (Kennedy).

His cabinet isn't made up of folks who've run things, and done things that they had to worry about the cost of. It's made up of people who've never managed an actual enterprise.

Goldberg's point is that folks who've never run everything are proposing to run basically everything from your health care to auto emissions to banks and auto makers.

Their record, by the way, isn't so good so far. They took over banks with TARP, and set rules for how they can pay people, and now the banks can't find experienced bankers to run them under the new rules.

And, since the banks are finding ways to meet the TARP repayment requirements early, and get out from under the government, the Fed now wants to change to rules so it can take over healthy banks it thinks might be a threat to financial stability. That change is sure to make it easier to get folks to work in the industry.

They took over GM, fired the old CEO, ousted his replacement, and now worry about finding anyone else who wants to run Government Motors. My guess is they won't find a senior level executive with experience in that industry to take the job.

I'll refer our friends in D.C. back to a book I read some 20 years ago, that explained exactly why the government was bad at running things. Command of the Seas by John Lehman; Regan's Secretary of the Navy; who wanted to get the government out of the shipyard business because they did a poor job of running them. Government regulations on compensation made it impossible to get anyone above the mid-manager level in the civilian sector to take on the job of managing any of the Navy's shipyards. Lack of experience led regularly to decisions that caused huge cost overruns, poor performance, and a lack of competitiveness with the civilian sector on nearly every job the government managed yards performed.

Lehman found those problems not only at the yards, but in every part of the Department of the Navy that was run by career civil servants. He also found the one thing that could stop any government reform from working as designed; Congress. As hard as anyone would try to fix something, someone in one chamber or the other would find it a threat to a constituency and get a rider passed in a bill that undid the reform.

Anyone that thinks health care reform or cap and trade is going to work any different doesn't understand the culture of government, and the hypocrisy of their intellect.

Why Was Hasan In the Army?

2009-11-09T09:24:00.003-06:00

It's becoming more and more evident that Major Hasan, the man responsible for the Fort Hood shooting last week was a known muslim extremist. The question then becomes why was he still in the military?

The question is two fold. First, why didn't he, if he was so convinced the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were so wrong; resign his commission. He obviously had some courage in convictions to kill all those folks, but not enough conviction to resign his commission (and paycheck) as a protest.

The second is why didn't the military do something to get rid of him. That's actually pretty easy, it's called the press. Without every duck in a row, had the military tried to remove him from the service all he had to do was hire a decent lawyer and start a media battle.

Let me give you an example. The military life insurance (SGLI) has a suicide clause in it that says you receive no insurance money for suicide. Yet in 21 years in the military I saw quite a large number of them due to some of the jobs I had. In every case the family was paid the full amount of the insurance. When I asked the Captain I worked for why he said the cost of fighting the legal battle over the money was much more than just paying the insurance. A destitute wife and three kids will always win over the law infront of a jury, plus the bad publicity cost in recruiting.

In Hasan's case we have a lot of apologists in America for Muslim extremists who would be more than happy to rally around a guy getting tossed from the military for his religious beliefs. What we lack is moderate Muslims with the courage of their convictions to stand up and say "That guy is a whack job and should be tossed from the military".

No Hope or Change for Unemployed

2009-11-06T09:33:00.002-06:00

So the Labor Department just released the unemployment numbers. The rate is now up to 10.2%, it's highest in more than a quarter century.

Back in 2003 and early 2004, moving towards the election season, we were bombarded with blasts at then President George W. about his "jobless recovery" and the 6 percent unemployment rate.

So how will the left spin their recovery that isn't just jobless, but actually shedding jobs? Remember the good old days, when Nancy Pelosi would blast Bush on jobs creation, complaining when only 80 or 90,000 jobs were created in a month? What will she say to President Obama who's touting other news that says we are in a recovery, when 190,000 jobs were lost!

Does anyone remember this graph, that was used to justify the 'stimulus' package earlier this year.

According to the Chart, unemployment should be about around 7.8% since we passed the stimulus. Instead, the number is literally off the top of the chart.

The flip side to unemployment is that our productivity numbers had their biggest jump in nearly a decade. It's normal to see productivity going up before jobs are added, but not at a 9% pace. In fact, it's up enough that people should really be worried about why the jobs aren't showing up.

Why aren't they? Fear in the business sector is the easiest answer. There is currently tons of new regulation on business waiting to be passed in Congress. Business' won't expand until they have a better feel on where things like health care reform and cap and trade are headed.

Here's an example. Say you employ 95 people, and your productivity for them is up 9.5% last quarter. You probably have enough work to add between 5 and 10 new workers. But if the House version of health care reform passes, that would put you at the magic 100 number. Now in 2010 your taxes or benefits package costs will increase greatly, you aren't a "small business" anymore.

So do you hire the workers you need, and hope that you increase profits enough to cover the expenses of not only the workers, but the new health care bill, or do you hold off and see what happens in DC?

If you have 100 workers right now, and know that the House is getting ready for a ramrod vote on Saturday, do you keep what you've got, or get rid of a few folks to get back under the onerous 100?

This Is Not A Referendum!

2009-11-04T07:30:00.000-06:00

Do as the MSM and White House are doing, and say to yourself over and over "the election results in Virginia and New Jersey are not a referendum on Barack Obama or the Democrats". Just keep saying it, at some point you'll believe it, they do.

The truth is Barack Obama & Company spent a lot of time in New Jersey trying to save John Corzine from his record. Tim Kaine, the head of the DNC is the outgoing governor of Virginia, and the GOP took his seat, and a few others in the state. The NY Times and Washington Post will undoubtedly repeat the party line that these aren't referendums on the Democrats, they are.

The party line is that the "Obama coalition" didn't show up to vote in those elections. The young, and people of color chose to stay home, even though Obama showed up five times in New Jersey to beg to come out and vote and make a difference. That is somewhat of a referendum on President Obama's staying power. He's not as new and cool as he was last year.

Add to that fact that the ballots were pretty much stuffed with white guys who are career politicians, and you have a recipe for not getting out the youth vote, or the minority vote. This is something that the Democrats will have to keep in mind for the 2010 mid-term elections.

New York's 23rd Congressional District did go to the Democrats. I'm not sure that is a true indicator of anything though, since the "GOP" candidate dropped out Saturday and endorsed the Democratic candidate, leaving Doug Hoffman of the Conservative Party out on his own. The State GOP can blame themselves for that loss, though. They put up a candidate as a Republican who's farther left than many Democrats, and wonder why she didn't poll well and couldn't raise money.

Another interesting tidbit, Maine it was thought, would be one of the first states to pass a Gay Marriage ballot referendum, and instead it wend down. This didn't surprise me. Maine has an independent streak as a state, but generally runs a little bit to the right. They elect moderate republicans to the Senate all the time. So the idea that this didn't fly up there shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, except the folks that thought the 2008 elections mean the entire country shifted to the left.

Is it Much Ado About Nothing?

2009-11-01T09:23:00.000-06:00

The AP has a story out today asking if the uproar over the "Public Option" in the current health care reform bills is much ado about nothing. If you read only the public option portion of the bill, you'd probably have a hard time disagreeing with that assessment.

The reason they give for believing it's a lot of hot air over a little thing is the CBO estimates of the number of people who will opt for the public insurance program. The CBO says only about two percent of the population would take the public option. In the current House bill you can't get into the public option if you are covered by a plan through your job. To be eligible you'd have to work for a small enough company that the rest of the bill doesn't compel it provide coverage, or already be buying insurance on your own.

I think the CBO has done a good job in point out costs associated with all of the health care legislation, but as always, they do it with static numbers. They assume that no individuals or businesses will change their habits based on the new law. That's where the problem lies with their current estimate. I also understand that it would be nearly impossible for the CBO to run dynamic computer models on behavior in the short amount of time Congress gives them to review legislation. I often wonder if that isn't by Congressional design.

History has already shown in Maine, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey that the guaranteed issuance and group rating methods drive private insurance companies out of the markets after raising costs to the point they can't be profitable. Both the House and Senate bills contain each of these provisions in them, and I doubt that history will suddenly undo itself, and they'll work without raising costs.

The result will be (as it has been already) that as costs go up insurance companies will drop out of the exchange program, and choices will dwindle to a few not-for profit companies and the public option. Don't think so, go online and try and get a health insurance quote in Maine. There are about 5 companies left doing business there.

Another cost driver in the bill, which seems innocuous at first, is the rescission rules. We all get to hear the breathless stories on the news of the woman who had her insurance dropped right before she started treatment for cancer. "Oh those heartless insurance companies!" the anchor will opine. What the news doesn't tell you is that for every one person who is wrongfully dropped about two hundred and fifty are rightfully dropped for fraudulently obtaining insurance.

The House fix for this is to compel insurance companies to pay for care for anyone they want to drop until a mediator has decided if it's a case of fraud where the person should be dropped. That sounds fair enough, if you are the patient. However, if you are the insurance company, you now get legal bills and medical bills for the 99% of people you can legally drop for fraudulently obtaining insurance. How much of that money does anyone think will be recouped from the fraudster? Who do you think will make it up to the insurance company? Congress isn't going to pay them for it, which means the folks who are legit will get higher premiums to pay for both the care, and legal bills of someone else.

I also think this is going to end up one of the bigger legal entanglements of the bill. Guaranteed issuance says you can't be denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition, and community ratings say you can't be charged more because of it, but the proposed law also says if you don't reveal it you have obtained insurance fraudulently. I'm pretty sure this will end up in court about as fast as any other provision in the bill.

Sugar High Recovery

2009-10-30T16:28:00.003-05:00

My favorite radio guy, Charlie Sykes has often called the economic numbers driven by Cash for Clunkers and the housing tax credit a "sugar high" for the economy.

Yesteday everyone on the left side of the aisle in DC was touting the economic numbers that showed the recession had ended, based on the last quarter GDP numbers. Wall St., never folks to pass on good news, added well over 100 points to the Dow.

Ah but the sugar high. Today numbers came out that showed consumer spending growth, even with Cash for Clunkers, was only up for one month, and down for the next, wages are stagnant, and employment numbers aren't great.

Consumer sentiment dropped, and the outlook for the quarter, with holiday spending is for spending growth to be about 1%. That's not the stuff lasting recoveries are made of.

The Dow dropped 249 points on todays news, it's biggest one day drop since July. Wall St. isn't, evidently buying into the idea of a full blown recovery.

I actually have another thing that made me realize this is a sugar high. My 401(k) statement came in the mail a few days ago. Generally things looked pretty good, the market has moved mostly up the last quarter, which made my stock based funds perform pretty well. But even with the market moving up, my bond fund outperformed the stock funds. That's very unusual, and almost never happens.

Why are they going up so quick? Investors don't buy the recovery, and would like to put money into the standard 'safe haven' instrument of choice. However, since so much is being borrowed, they also doubt the ability to repay them; bonds are loans you know; and are demanding a better return on investment.

Basically, the investor class has put the government bond market into a 'sub prime' category in all but name.

The crash from that sugar high is going to be much worse than anything we've seen before, unless somehow fiscal discipline returns to Washington.

Health Care Reform Act

2009-10-29T22:48:00.000-05:00

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has made the house version of "health care reform" available for reading and download (pdf format). I hope you have a lot of time, as it is 1,990 pages long, since your legislators want to vote on it next week, I'm pretty sure most of them won't have time to read it.

If you think 1,990 pages of legislation is incomprehensible, and and it's contents unknow even to those who claim to be the authors, you are probably right. Just perusing through it the bill is a mish-mash of amendments and revisions to existing codes. My guess is that if it were to be gone through completely it probably contains dozens, if not hundreds, of entaglement problems, where one section orders one thing, another section the opposite, or something substantially different.

Considering Dingell, Rangel, George Miller and Henry Waxman are the principle authors, you can rest assured that they have included plenty of pay-offs to their favored groups. I doubt any of them have passed legislation that didn't.

Have a good read.

Take His Time?

2009-10-27T15:24:00.003-05:00

So, my laugh of the day started yesterday, when I heard a newscaster say that President Obama planned to "take his time" in making a decision on if or when to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Really? Hasn't he already been doing that? A month ago we all heard that McChrystal had asked for more troops, and shortly after that we found out that the original assessment/request was sent in a month before that.

Two months, and now we hear that they are going to take their time? They have been taking their time already. My guess is whenever the commander in chief decides he has to decide, Congress will then want hearings to second guess whatever that decision is, delaying things even longer.

Here's where the real problem is for Obama. He can't ignore McChrystal, he spent his short time in the Senate telling GWB that he was an idiot for not listening to the commanders on the ground. )Well, until the commanders said they needed more troops, then he said Bush was an idiot for listening to them). The he complained he was wasting time in Iraq and not concentrating on Afghanistan.

Now he's in the drivers seat, and it's time to concentrate harder on Afghanistan, and those damn folks over there refuse to realize he is The One© and just lay down arms and sing Kumbaya. So the apparent strategy is just ignore everything, and hope everyone forgets to fight over there.

Fact Checking Congress

2009-10-25T08:41:00.003-05:00

The AP has a lot of faults. However, I give them credit for their FACTCHECK series of articles that they've been running. They've been pretty balanced, and gone against the grain of the MSM of late and been critical of President Obama and Congress.

The latest, a fact check on insurance profits shows something that Nance Pelosi, Harry Reid, and "The One"© don't want you to know, insurance company profits aren't that high.

WHAT!!! Wait, I was told they are making scads of money, and dead people are piling up so they can do it, how does that work?

It's actually pretty easy. If you only talk in dollars, and not percentages, it sounds like huge profits. When you actually look at the returns on investment and growth rates, the insurance industry is pretty far down on the list.

In fact, if you were writing a portfolio, most insurance companies would be in the sustainable growth category, an area you park money to keep up with inflation and mitigate risk, not to make a big profit.

Right now it might not even get into that category, with profits equalling only two percent of revenue. If you listen to the folks trying to demonize the industry, you'd think expenditures are only two percent of revenue, the rest going into some fat cat's pocket.

The other way the numbers are getting skewed is when someone wants to paint an insurance company as greedy they lump all profits, not just health insurance, into the equation. Companies that provide homeowners, health, life and auto insurance do have higher profit margins. Most of those profits come from the other products though. In fact, if you want to get mad, start looking up the profit to revenue margin on auto and life insurance, and ask why Congress isn't concerned about those.

So who makes more than insurance companies? Railroads, the folks who give you Tupperware, network and communications equipment makers (1ox insurance company profits), Coors brewing, Yahoo and others.

How come they aren't being demonized?

Executive Pay Mess

2009-10-25T08:17:00.001-05:00

As I was reading through my Wall Street Journal opinion pages yesterday, I came across a great article that explains the executive pay mess that Wall Street, and others are facing. "Washington's Plans May Result in Even Higher Executive Pay " explains how a Congress, in 1992 decided that cash payments to executives were wrong, and didn't tie their compensation to actual company performance. They also thought that boards of directors weren't doing enough to increase shareholder value, and that by tying their compensation to performance it would create an environment that would make us (shareholders) more money, and keep executives from being overpaid for under performing.

Now of course, Congress is ticked off that executives get big stock option bonuses, based on performance guidelines they codified 17 years ago, and want to change the system, because evidently it's unfair again.

There are a few outcomes that are nearly sure anytime congress does anything. One is they won't accurately predict the results. In 1992 it was thought that executive pay would stay fairly stable, while shareholder value went up. But since they wrote a bad law, only one of the two did happen, shareholder value did go up. But executive pay skyrocketed based on the criteria congress laid out.

Now, we are seeing the other end of the spectrum. While the President complains banks won't lend enough, he signs bills that punish the banks, and specifically the boards, for taking risks.

Look over the financials and you see that AAA corporate lending is back to a pretty steady track, where it was in the 2006 and 2007. Small business, venture, and personal lending, the riskiest types are languishing far behind.

This is rightfully so based on the way the TARP program has worked. Now the rules are take out too much risk, and the boys from the Fed will show up with a check you can't refuse, and take control of your bank, either explicitly or implicitly through congressional action.

The worst is yet to come, though. The new pay schemes, if they work at limiting executive pay won't just slash pay, they'll slash talent. The folks at the top of the banking industry aren't rubes, they can work in nearly any industry and be successful. So when the government decides what's "fair" compensation for anyone who took bailout funds, they'll just bail out of the industry.

What we'll be left with is an industry that's full of newly promoted former middle managers, who didn't leave because they were afraid they couldn't succeed elsewhere. The result is going to be less money for anyone to borrow, with you and me still at the bottom of the list to get that money.

And of course, Congress will wonder why this happened.

Your Assignment for Today

2009-10-23T09:48:00.003-05:00

Go here today , watch the scroll, and remember why we fight radical terrorists.

My thoughts and prayers are still with them, after all of these yearrs.

Too Much Driving

2009-10-20T20:29:00.002-05:00

I don't mind driving. I can't, my job requires it, to the tune of about 45,000 miles per year. However, at times it does get to be a few too many miles.

Yesterday I drove 570 miles, not to get to a job, but to get within four hours of it so I could finish driving (211 miles) there today. Of course all of this morning miles were in a fog with about 50 yards visibility. Then, after about three hours of work and a stop at the gas station, back on the road. 268 more miles to the hotel for tonight.

Tomorrow isn't bad, the job is close, and the hotel for tomorrow night is only about 80 miles from it. Then Thursday it's a half day of work, then start making my way home.

So, by the end of the week I should be right around 1750 miles, plus 3 jobs. I'm pretty when I get home I'll just hit the bed and die (or at least pass out).

Twitter Ate My Blog

2009-10-18T12:13:00.001-05:00

Well, okay, it didn't eat it, but it did block access to it. Evidently Twitter is down, and it's widget locked up loading of my blog. One of the cool things about twitter is it's easier to post a quick thought than it is here. The down side is that it crashes on a regular basis. At least twice a day I get the "Over Capacity" error, or it just doesn't load.

So, I fixed (read, blocked) the widget, and now the blog loads again.

Update *** It's noon, and Twitter is still dead **** I dont' think my life will change.

But Did They Card Him?

2009-10-17T20:41:00.004-05:00

Okay, this is too funny. And not a joke....

Q: So why did the bear go into the liquor store?
A: To nap in the beer cooler.

A genuine "No Shitter" story from Hayward, Wisconsin. Figures, only in Wisconsin would bears walk straight to the beer.

The only question is did anyone think to card him?

Higher Insurance Rates, Coming Soon!

2009-10-17T08:14:00.003-05:00

The Wall Street Journal once again points out the failure of a state (New York) to insure more people, give great choice in policies, and cut insurance costs through mandates and controls.

The insurance companies released their report saying that prices will go up about 20% if the Baucus Bill passes. But the WSJ article points out that New York's rates have doubled since the state decided that they should mandate coverage types, rates, etc.

So, since it's failed in New York the obvious thing to do is have the whole country try it, right?

Advice to Insurance Companies

2009-10-15T13:44:00.004-05:00

So I'm reading the news, and see Nancy Pelosi is pissed that insurance companies are telling the truth about the Senate health care reform bill. That truth, your premiums are going to go up, considerably.

This bothers the left because they (desperately) want you to believe that health care reform is going to be a free lunch. They want you to believe that because the truth, as it's played out everywhere that has used community rating, guaranteed issuance and zero waiting has been the opposite.

My advice to insurance companies isn't to shut up so that they'll stop adding ideas to their already bad plan. Just the opposite. Keep getting louder, so they add more.

Why, pray tell, would I suggest that? Easy, the worse the bill gets the easier it will be for insurance companies to exit the market before it takes effect. They will be going out of business once it does, anyway. So hasten your own death, and allow the feds to pick up the entire tab for their folly.

If things work out right, they'll make being an insurance company so onerous at implementation time that no on in the public (other than the "Obama Stash" crew) will blame you... But they will blame congress.

Nobel Prize for Possibilities

2009-10-09T06:25:00.002-05:00

President Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize for his stands on a number of issues. Not actual accomplishments, but his 'ideas'. That's because on the issues that they mentioned, he's actually accomplished nothing, except giving out "warm fuzzies".

Nuclear Disarmament? Well he's talked about it, while pretty much allowing Iran to continue developing fuel and North Korea to keep working on improving their bombs. Putin's laughed at him about it.

Peace in the Muslim World? Still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and still hasn't gotten Israel and the Palestinians to the table. But he did say that the Taliban could have a role in governing Afghanistan.

He did reaffirm the importance of the UN as a world body by allowing Iran to have the floor to deny the holocaust and threaten most of it's neighbors. That's gotta count for something.

He's worked on appeasement with Venezuela, Iran, the Taliban, and pretty much anyone else.

Yeah, he's a peace prize guy.

I can't believe the committee couldn't find a person with an actual accomplishment to their name to give the prize to.

Lessons from the States

2009-10-08T06:27:00.001-05:00

Peter Suderman has a great article in the Wall St. Journal's opinions page about lessons we've learned from the states when it comes to health care reform and mandates.

The Lesson of State Health-Care Reforms points out some inconvenient truths; to borrow a phrase; about health care reform. Specifically, those things that we are being told from Washington will reduce our costs have done just the opposite in the states.

He points out numerous states, New York, Maine, Kentucky, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Jersey that have tried things like community rating (rates based strictly on age, not risk) and guaranteed issuance (pre-existing conditions ignored) and mandated coverage. What they found is that each of them, in their own way, increased the cost of insurance, and didn't significantly decrease the number of uninsured.

Sounds counter intuitive that mandated coverage wouldn't decrease the number of uninsured, but, as Massachusetts has found out, if the penalty isn't big enough to be a problem, people will still ignore the mandate. They've also found out that with community rating and guaranteed issuance many people buy coverage when they find out they are sick, then drop it when the treatment ends.

Wisconsin was added to the list of failed state initiatives this week, when it's Badgercare Plus, for childless adults announced it couldn't afford to let anyone else into the program after this Friday. Like "Cash for Clunkers" it ran out of money long before anticipated, three months instead of a year.

While Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle says that Badgercare Plus's problem shows we need national health reform, he doesn't mention that we should probably multiply the cost estimates by four to actually have enough money to pay for it. Then again, that's probably a wise thing to ignore. If folks were told we'd need 4 trillion over ten years, or even 3.4 trillion for the Senate package, everyone would be at the tea parties.

Truth Stranger than Parody!

2009-10-06T22:14:00.004-05:00

CNN, known to many conservatives as the "Communist News Network" hasn't got a lot of credibility with them. If it had any, it's now gone, after Wolf Blitzer fact checked an SNL skit mocking President Obama.

I wish I was making it up, but I doubt SNL has writers capable of coming up with a skit where a (supposed) major news network decided to fact check a parody.

Here it is for your enjoyment. H/T to Doug at Below the Beltway

BTW, I'm pretty sure George Bush would have appreciated the same treatment from Wolf.

Don't Get Cancer, Grandma!

2009-10-06T05:50:00.001-05:00

Don't get cancer, Grandma, 0h, and don't have a heart attack, either. Why, well medicare is slashing it's payments to cardiologists and oncologists next year, that's why. The Wall St. Journal has a nice piece on the issue today.

EKG's and stress tests will have their reimbursement rate cut by 42%, and cardiac catheterizations by 24%. Oncologists are seeing similar cuts, with radiation treatment getting a 44% whack.

This has nothing to do with health care reform legislation, this is just next years Medicare reimbursement rate. If the Senate finance version of reform passes, those specialists will see even bigger cuts in their future reimbursement rates.

Jack Lewin, head of the American College of Cardiologists figures this years cuts will drive many doctors out of business, or force seniors to the back of the line for treatment.

Considering Medicare pays about $0.83 on the dollar to doctors as is, cutting some rates by 44% means they are asking doctors to provide services for less than half the actual rate they charge private insurance patients. Good luck getting that stent, stress test, or radiation treatment.

My Monday Dream...

2009-09-29T21:47:00.004-05:00

Next Monday is many things. Most importantly, my 25th anniversary. Hey, Lovely Wife, I don't know how you put up with me for this many years, but thank you!!!!!!!

We've already celebrated with a trip to the gulf coast. And we'll be visiting the kid in Ohio over the weekend, driving home Monday.

Monday Night, though, is something big. Packers vs. Vikings,with Brent Farve wearing Purple...Oh, I spelled his name wrong, sorry, he hasn't been around here in a while, I forgot.

Anyway, the obvious dream is Green Bay winning 35-0, with ~~Farve~~ Favre throwing 6 picks like he did against the Rams one time.

But, if Minnesota were to win, I'd rather see BF toss a few picks that go for TD's, then get hurt trying to throw a cheap crack back block like he did in preseason (karma), and have Tavaris Jackson lead the comeback for Minnesota. That would be funny as hell.

BTW, for the folks who keep pointing out his pass to Greg Lewis to win the game Sunday, keep in mind that if it weren't for the alligator arms of a San Franciso cornerback two plays before, when Favre hit him in the numbers with a sure pick, the game would have been over. Luck won that game, not Favre. But that happens a lot in the NFL.

How about a Roll Back?

2009-09-26T08:54:00.004-05:00

So anyway, Wal-Mart is always talking about their price roll backs. Well, I found an item on the shelf that needs one, by all means. I'm sure NO ONE bought a single box of this popcorn. I don't care how good it is.

There was actually a 42" flat screen TV under the popcorn, and I'm (pretty) sure that's what the price was for. Still, it was pretty funny.

McConnell Blasts Government Over Gag Order

2009-09-24T05:53:00.007-05:00

McConnell Blasts Government Over 'Gag Order' on Private Health Care Provider - Political News - FOXNews.com

What's that about? Humana evidently sent a flyer out to it's Medicare Advantage customers telling them that HR 3200 and the Senate Finance bill by Max Baucus threatened their benefits. Baucus, in a hissy fit, order Medicare's oversight folks to investigate Humana for doing it, claiming they were misleading and confusing seniors.

AARP, who's spending millions advertising to support such legislation; with just as confusing language; and who runs a Medicare Advantage program, hasn't been asked to stop what they are doing.

Mitch McConnnell has hoisted the BS flag, and asked why the government is trying to gag companies from providing information about legislation, other than to protect themselves from being discovered as liars.

The CBO has come out and basically sided with Humana, saying millions of seniors will either lose Advantage coverage completely, or see a decline in benefits due to the cuts Baucus is proposing in the program in his bill, and the House in there version.

If you look at actual facts about Advantage, you'd have to wonder why it's the targets of so many cuts. It provides service for about 20% cheaper than standard Medicare, and the folks who use it rate it much higher for customer service than Medicare.

It seems if Congress were serious about cutting Medicare costs they'd expand enrollment in Advantage, not try and cut it. Except Advantage uses private health insurers to provide it's service, and we all know they are evil, just ask Nancy Pelosi and the President.

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Government to Mandate Auto Ownership!

2009-09-21T07:05:00.004-05:00

The government has decided to mandate automobile ownership, one of my inside sources told me.

Why would they do such a thing? Well it seems that those who drive automobiles are getting stuck with an extra charge that drives the cost of a car up, they have to pay extra to subsidize public transportation.

Gas taxes, wheel taxes, registration fees and tolls are all funnelled into public transit funds, making those who drive pay for those to take the bus. Yes, bus and train riders do pay a fare, but it doesn't cover the actual cost of providing public transportation.

The way it is being put together, if you can't afford to buy a car, you'll get a government subsidy to help pay for it, through an approve government auto dealer (GM or Chrysler, since the government owns them). You won't be allowed to buy one from outside those approve dealers if you use the government money.

The feds will also determine what type of vehicle is available through the dealers. There will be no waivers, if the 4 passenger Cobalt won't work for your family, that's too bad.

If you do have a car, but it's blue book value exceeds a preset limit, you will be charged a tax on it, to help fund the subsidies to those who don't have cars.

If you can afford to buy one, but insist on using public transportation, at the end of the year the IRS will verify you don't have a car, and assess you a fine, from $800 to $3900 a year based on income, to punish you for not buying one.

Does this sound insane? Yes. And it's not happening. However, the part about drivers subsidizing public transit is true, just like insured people subsidize the uninsured (or those on Medicare).

So why would you consider this a reach, when the Senate and House are already considering legislation, using this same logic, in the name of health care reform?

Bird Shit Couldn't Wreck Tonight

2009-09-09T22:57:00.001-05:00

I have to say, when a bird takes a dump on my head, it usually wrecks my day. But not tonight.

The Lovely Wife and I are in New Orleans celebrating our silver wedding anniversary, and went out for the big dinner tonight.

I decided on Cafe Adelaide, a member of the Commanders Palace family of restaurants, and couldn't have been more pleased. The staff was incredible, and the food better. Every course made you want more of it, and anticipate the next.

First, I want them to start selling their shrimp 'corn dogs' in Chicago. A huge gulf shrimp in a well seasoned corn dog batter with a sauce that had just enough heat to tell you there was pepper in it, but not so much that you wanted a drink after a bite. A pile of them with a six pack would be great eats for a football game.

The soup portions were almost too generous. Blue Crab Bisque with saffron and popcorn (yes, popcorn) was my choice. If it weren't for the fact that in a fancy restaurant they frown on it, I would have stuck my face in the bowl and licked it clean. The Lovely One had turtle soup au sherry, and possibly an orgasm while eating it. She's loved turtle soup since her youth, and claims this is the best ever. It is a tried and true one, since it's the original from Commander's Palace.

For entree's I tried the Ahi Tuna with a cayenne and five spice blend, she had the crispy shrimp with grits. The idea of cayenne with ahi kind of scared me. Many places let the sauce, rub or crust overpower the tuna, and hot peppers would be an easy way to do it. Their preparation was just the opposite. The pepper and five spice were subtle and complimentary, not overpowering. The blue crab fried rice was a perfect side with it, acting as a palate cleanser between bites of tuna so you never missed the subtleties of the dish.

Her shrimp were ginormous; which I think is a technical size for shrimp; whole gulf shrimp and had a light batter with a perfect seasoning. She gave me one bite, and I had thoughts of stealing the plate. The grits were stone ground, firm and wonderful, definitely not the stuff you buy in a box. A great pairing with the shrimp, and a wonderful take on a southern classic. The only problem was that there was so much she couldn't finish it and have room for dessert, which I insisted we have.

For dessert I had a peach cobbler with candied ginger ice cream and white chocolate. Never thought of that grouping, but who ever did is a genious. The peach and ginger were awesome together!

The wife ordered a cheesecake that would rival anything you can find in New York or Chicago (sorry Eli). Creamy, smooth and light, with just enough chocolate to taste good and not overpower.

As for the staff, excellent is an understatement. I spend a lot of time in restaurants due to work, and can't think of many that rivaled this group. They wanted to know everyone's name, where you were from, what brought you to town, etc. If you sat for too long with a blank stare, (usually from trying to understand how the food could be so good), one of the staff was there to make sure everything was okay.

Within minutes of saying were were in town celebrating our anniversary the bar sent over two mini-cocktails (Adelaide Swizzle) that I could drink for a week (and not walk for two). When dessert came out, the cheesecake plate had "Happy Anniversary" written on it in chocolate sauce.

As for the bird shit, after dinner we decided to make a quick trip back to Bourbon Street. When I parked the truck I walked under a tree, and a resident decided my hair needed some work, and redecorated my head. It didn't matter, we'd had such a great night even bird shit couldn't wreck it.

What's the Plan?

2009-09-03T09:51:00.004-05:00

So, the President is now going to make a speech to a joint session of congress to try and get health care reform; or is it insurance reform this week; back on track.

According to the New York Times the idea is to simplify things so that folks will better understand what he wants.

Reading into the Times article it's clear that he really doesn't want to scale back as much as some claim. And the things that will lead to a government take over are still there, and items that could really lead to lower costs are missing.

For example, he'd like to keep the public option, as a form of "competition", but still rejects the idea of selling policies across state lines, which would be a market way of reducing prices.

He'd still like to force insurers to charge the same rate to anyone in an age group, regardless of health, fully knowing that rates then go up for the majority of healthy individuals to cover the added expense of those who aren't.

While he likes the idea of a coverage mandate for individuals, he really hasn't talked about an enforcement mechanism. The problem with this has been seen in Massachusetts, where people get insurance so they have a policy number when they file taxes (when it's checked). Then they dump the policy a month later. They don't pick coverage up again until they are either sick, or have to file again.

He'd like a "no wait, no restriction" guarantee on insurance policies. What does that mean, well, if you call 1-800-insure-me at 8 am to get a policy, at 9:00 you can deliver a baby by Cesarean, and be fully covered. Then, you can drop your policy a few week later when the bills are paid.

What does all this really do? It makes it nearly impossible for an insurance company that isn't underwritten by the federal treasury to break even, much less be profitable. This is an important thing to the President and the folks on the left. They know that the companies will stop writing insurance (ask New Yorkers, and folks in Maine) and then they can claim that "evil insurance companies" don't care about you, and you'd be better off with the public option.

Don't be fooled by the smooth talk next Thursday. The truth is the only goal of this reform idea is to make it impossible for anyone but the government to compete in the insurance business.

The Government Can!

2009-09-03T06:16:00.002-05:00

Great YouTube video from Tim Hawkins

Thanks Charlie

Why We Don't Trust Congress

2009-08-29T08:11:00.001-05:00

Need a(nother) reason not to trust Congress on health care reform? We've all heard about HR 3200, the House version. Well Chris Dodd's Senate committee also has a 1,000 page bill that they've voted on.

No one on the committee has even seen the full bill, much less the whole Senate getting a chance to read it. The only thing up on their site is 790 pages before amendments. According to this Wall Street Journal article, committee staffers have said it probably won't be posted by October.

We were promised a new era of tranparency in government not long ago. Evidently the only thing transparent is that promise, not the process of health care reform.

I wonder

2009-08-28T03:35:00.002-05:00

I was just in Massechuetsetts last week, and had to smuggle in a bottle of wine from our favorite Wisconsin vineyard to one of my co-workers up there. There is no legal way for anyone but a liquor distributor to get booze to that state, unless you bring it in for "individual use". Weird. As I've written here before, it's the same state that doesn't allow the serving of doubles in bars.

Now that they no longer have to protect Teddy Kennedy from himself, do you think they'll loosen some of those rules up?

Too soon for such a joke? Sorry, I don't see; and never have; Mr. Kennedy as some iconic great grandfather of the Senate. He was a drunk, a womanizer, and a man who left a woman for dead to protect himself and his family name. Later in life, when his nephew followed his lead, he tried protecting him.

He was a man who railed against the rich not wanting to pay "their fair share", while he kept his money in offshore trusts to avoid the US taxes on it.

Ted was a man who couldn't believe people wouldn't want to stem global warming, but fought tooth and nail to keep a wind farm from his sight lines on Cape Cod. Wind farms are evidently for folks who can't afford a beach front compound.

Now the Senate, it a full blow version of hypocrisy wants to rename the Health Care Reform Bill after Teddy Kennedy. They claim his battle with brain cancer shows we need reform. What they don't say is that Mr. Obama's Comparitive Effectiveness Review Board would probably deem a 74 year old (his age when the cancer was discovered) to be too old for most of the treatments Kennedy recieved. There wouldn't have been enough "quality adjusted life years" available to Mr. Kennedy to make it a worthwhile use of scarce health care resources.

Continuing Contradictions

2009-08-23T07:02:00.004-05:00

Could someone please tell the Democrats to get their stories straight! One day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells the world that health care reform won't leave the House without a public option. The next day Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that the bill probably can't leave the House with a public option.

And of course the president is still swaying too and fro on the idea of it being either a necessity, or a single piece of a bigger puzzle.

If the Democrats want to know why American's are confused, and therefore distrustful of their plans, all they have to do is read their own words. Confusion seldom breads concensus and is never the foundation for trust.