On Health Care: Run It Like A Business

On June 15, I got my Extended Benefits Unemployment Compensation forms in the mail.  These come from the state; unlike the regular state unemployment which can be filed online, these forms must be filled out and sent in by a specific date or “you may be ineligible for benefits for the week you are claiming.”  I looked at the claim forms and these are the dates I had to sign, date, and mail on:  5/24/09, 5/31/09, 6/7/09, and the last one 6/14/09.  Did I mention I got the thing in my mailbox on 6/15/09??

We’re all aware of the many Federal government clusterfu**s, one of the worst being the handling of Hurricane Katrina.  Almost everything the government does is done wrong.  I’m not sure if it’s the endless paper-pushing bureaucracy, an I-don’t-care attitude as long as I get my paycheck thing, or the fact that do-nothing politicians have a habit of rewarding their do-nothing supporters and friends with government jobs.  They also don’t have to worry about the bottom-line, or showing a profit like real organizations.  They just find something new to tax.  American taxpayers are the collapsing banks; government bureaucrats and politicians are the thieves robbing them blind.

My two hard-working older sons have to deal with mind-numbing military bureaucracy.  They’ve had to fight for every benefit they were promised when signing up to help defend their country. Oldest Son has had educational loans they promised to pay from 2003.  A mountain of paperwork resulted in one small payment being made; the last effort produced no results, and by now, the loan is probably accruing more interest than it was originally worth.  He has also had almost his entire reserve paycheck deducted erroneously for months due to some SNAFU someone made–and finally acknowledged–since quite a few in his unit were affected.  How long until they fix it?  Only God knows.  It’s just a good thing my son doesn’t have a family to support right now.

Everything the government touches becomes either corrupt or bankrupt.  Why did our banks fail?  Government mandates that forced banks to make loans to people that were poor risks had way more to do with the meltdown than corporate greed.  Business executives don’t take stupid risks like this if they want to make a profit.  They don’t have the luxury of being able to pick the pockets of the middle class to bail themselves out of their poor decisions.  Endless government regulations (beyond the necessary ones to ensure a safe workplace) and kowtowing to excessive union demands have caused our products to be overpriced and out of demand in the global economy.

Lee Iacocca, a business whiz who pretty much successfully raised Chrysler from the dead back in the early 1980’s using a government loan worth more than $1 billion, told The Associated Press that government intervention was strong motivation to repay the loan early.  “Their oversight is just too extreme,” said Iacocca, which was why “our 10 year loan, we paid it back in three years.  We couldn’t stand the government.  The bureaucracy kills you.”

Do you think it’s going to be any different when they take over our health care?  A very few people may be slightly better off at the expense of the rest of the nation.  Can you imagine the Federal government getting their greedy hands on all the health care dollars spent with their reputation for no accountability?  Do you want those amoral pinheads deciding whether your illness is one of the ones they deem worthy of being cured?  Can you even imagine the paperwork and time lag that every little procedure will entail?

The bottom line is, people are worried about government-run health care.  If they could find an intelligent business executive like Mr. Iacocca to run it, and have the checks and balances provided by a free-market system rather than oversight by government drones, it might not be so scary.  It’s frustrating when government bureaucracy doesn’t repay the loans they promised to pay or denies you the unemployment benefits you could use.  It’s a matter of life and death, however, when you put them in charge of your health care.

On Joe The Plumber: And Mob Revenge

Poor Joe the Plumber.  As a concerned citizen seeking to become a more informed voter, he asked Barack Obama about his plan to redistribute income through raising taxes on successful businesspeople.  Now he’s being investigated, his life is being probed, and his personal business is being reported throughout media outlets.  All because he asked a question of the Anointed One, in a way the Anti Messiah didn’t approve.

One day, Joe was a plumber minding his business.  The next day, the liberals are trying to dig up any dirt they can find about him.  Kind of reminds me of a certain scene from “The Godfather.”  You know, the one where the so-called double-crosser finds the dead horse in his bed.  You just don’t cross certain people.  You may end up wearing cement shoes.  Or finding dead animals in your house.  Obama is surrounded by a lot of shady characters; perhaps some of their tactics are rubbing off.

Who knows?  Maybe I should be afraid.  I’m sure some of my posts could piss certain people off.  Maybe a lot of us bloggers should start worrying.  After all, one of the Dems big proposals is to silence all the “conservatives” on the radio airwaves through the ironically named “Fairness Doctrine,” even though these folks don’t reach nearly the numbers that the liberal mainstream media brainwash and misinform daily.

So fellow Republicans and hard-working conservatives, watch your back.  You may end up being vetted, audited, and maybe even silenced.  There are certain elements of society that you just don’t dare cross.

On Democrats: Are They Really Female Friendly?

Watching Senator Hillary Clinton’s speech at the DNC really made me wonder.  Why isn’t she their presidential candidate?  She is very intelligent, articulate, and experienced enough to become an effective leader.  I know I’m eating some of my very own words.  She and her group-think policies scared me at first; however, after hearing some of the very scary leftist policies of Senator Obama, the United States bashing done by some of his closest allies, and his lack of any real solutions other than pretty rhetoric about how we need change (any idea how all this change will be funded–besides more stealing from the middle-class and the job creators?) and Senator Clinton looked better and better.  In fact, she’s not that far left of Senator McCain.  They both are pretty much near the center of the political spectrum, closer in ideology to the majority of hard-working everyday Americans who love this country and want to make it better.  The Democrats seem pretty excited about Michelle Obama playing the traditional role of devoted mommy and supportive first lady, but for all their feminist talk, do they really want to see a female president?

As a lifelong feminist myself, I could never understand the Democrats single-minded support of policies that are so damaging to women.  On the surface, abortion seems to be all about female rights.  It’s “freedom of choice” for the woman, or so it’s touted by the Dems.  It actually is a desperate reaction by a scared woman who is blinded to better options.  It’s a painful choice made by a girl that lacks support from others in her life.  Who it actually helps is the guy that made her pregnant who no way wants to be saddled with 18 years of child-support payments, or maybe the big-shot married bum that doesn’t want his wife to find out he was playing around.  At some point in her life, I would bet that any feeling compassionate woman would feel some pain and remorse for her child that might have been.  In fact, I worked with a girl that had an abortion when she was a teen.  I could sometimes see the pain in her eyes when she talked about it (which wasn’t often).  I’m sure the pain was much keener when she went on to have her other two children and saw how special they were.  Making women over-reliant on government aid is another thing that keeps females poor and dependent.  These are not things that are helpful in the long run to our sisters and our daughters.  But it might earn the Democrats a few votes.

On Incompetence: Why A Dollar An Hour is Too Much for Some

Ok.  It’s hard to rant too much when Soldier Son is safe at home here for a couple of weeks, but my bubble’s just been burst by some nincompoop on the other side of the country.  And Youngest Son has no idea where his last paycheck went.

Right after we got our new 50″ plasma TV late last month, I went online and ordered a new lower entertainment center with shelving to accommodate the new TV and receiver we bought.  I couldn’t wait for it to get here because we temporarily had the TV sitting on a too-low coffee table in front of the old entertainment stand.  It was crowded and not sitting at the right height.  I tracked the shipping from Redmond Washington through a stop in Illinois and even though the approximate arrival time was placed at July 10, I was hoping it would get here earlier.  And it did!!  This meant it could actually be assembled and set up before the cable guy comes on Wednesday to hook us up to the new Comcast HD package.  We rearranged the old furniture, opened up the first box (it came in a shipment of 2) and the cherry colored sides and doors were unpacked.  Then we opened up the next box and noticed the pieces were black.  “Does this thing have black shelves?” Big Daddy asked.

Ummm, no.  Clear as day on the boxes, the colors were listed, in English and in French.  One box was clearly labeled cherry/cerise and the other said black/noir.  The one has a LARGE C in front of the item number, while the other started with a BIG BLACK B.  Ze cerise will not look good with ze noir.  Do people not check their work?  How many more weeks will this transaction take?

Meanwhile, Youngest Son decided to have his store job direct deposit his paycheck because this job is a good thirty minutes away and he only works there on weekends.  He brought in a voided check like they requested so that they could set up direct deposit into his checking account.  On Saturday, he received a non-negotiable pay stub showing how much he had earned and the net amount deposited into his bank account, but when he went online to check his account, the deposit had not been made.  At least not into his account.  We’re worried it’s been put into someone else’s account, because supposedly it was paid out on June 27.  But it’s nowhere in Youngest Son’s possession.  Since he gave them a check to copy the number from, I know it’s not a case of my son writing down the wrong number.  Anyway, he wouldn’t do that.  He’s too much like me.

So, if you work in a warehouse in Washington state, or input bank account numbers for direct deposits and you think you’re not getting paid enough for your efforts, think about whether you’re the numbskull that doesn’t match part numbers on shipments to Pennsylvania, or transposes numbers from a poor hard-working college student’s checking account.  And be grateful you even have a job!!