The American People Need A Waiver, It's Only Fair

Shortly after Americans waived goodbye to their right to make their own health-care choices they waived goodbye to scores of congressmen and women who voted to take those rights away from them and give them to government instead. Sixty- three net seats in the Parliament of Whores were switched to the party that voted against Obamacare. A goodly number were switched in the Senate as well.

Perish the thought that Republicans might become confused by the switch and become deluded into thinking people are pining for the "good ole days" when George W. Bush was throwing capitalism under the bus. I'm guessing people weren't enamored of the "compassionate conservatism" which preceded it either. But then I've always been an optimist when it comes to the legion of Rip Van Winkles awakening at last, so I might be wrong about that part.

Since that electoral cleansing is only partially finished, with repudiation 2.0 not scheduled out of beta release for two more years, some have been groping for a way to prevent the destruction of the whole health insurance industry before it's too late.

And the inspiration for a possible solution recently came to me from an odd place. It's the Obama administration's HHS department (not usually a very inspiring place) where they had already admitted that the whole scheme won't work by telling over two hundred unions, large corporations and other FOOs (friends of Obama) that they could have a waiver.

Of course the first exemption they gave was to themselves, as usual. But the major leak of "non-requirees" turned into a flash flood in the last few weeks when it was learned that another five hundred plus FOOs were added to the list of organizations who were allowed to opt out. When 773 different organizations and over two million people are exempted from a law it's fair to make the case that the law should have never been made. If it's such a good law why isn't it good enough for everyone? (Including congressmen and other political opt-outers.)

The "progressive" movement is about nothing if it's not about "fairness." So just as it was when we were kids and were taught that the rules were for everyone, most Americans don't see much fairness now that it's clear that only some of us will be forced into this nightmare of lost rights and future lost loved ones.

So it's my recommendation that we all line up outside the office of HHS Czar Kathleen Sebelius and demand our waiver, too. All 311,987,238 of us (minus the two million already waived) should ask her why she is pro-choice on abortion but no-choice on all other "health-care" decisions.

If we all get waived, maybe we can wave goodbye to the biggest government power grab in this nation's history without wasting two more years while the clock ticks off the last moments before a total repudiation occurs.

Credits Could Lead To An Armistice in The School Wars

The only K-12 education I ever received as a child was provided at so called "public" schools. And any failure to become "educated" at those schools falls squarely upon my shoulders, not those of the many fine teachers who worked hard to pound some knowledge and reasoning skills into my thick skull.

Of course there were good classes and bad as well as competent and incompetent teachers but since none of the schools then or now were located in Utopia it was to be expected. I learned at least as many useful life lessons from the bad teachers as the good ones because it was obvious even to a dimwit kid that if you see mistakes being made you try to avoid them yourself in the future. So for me the government schools worked out OK even if I never became a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist.

Some of the better teachers taught me to always question things even if they seemed obvious. And I have spent the rest of my life questioning everything that the majority has already decided was elementary. It makes me a pain in the ass to many of my friends who nevertheless suffer me gladly.

One of the elementary things I have always questioned was the need for "public" schools in the first place. I accepted the given reason for government provided schools was to make sure that those too poor to educate their own children would not have uneducated kids. But what I couldn't figure out was why the government was providing a "free" education even to those who could afford it on their own. (Leave aside for the moment the fact that even though my family had very little money, in my neighborhood even the kids who were way "poorer" than us went to private schools.)

It never made sense to me that just because some people couldn't afford it everyone was provided with a government paid education. Even "rich" people. Why shouldn't the government just give the poor people a subsidy so they could send their kids to the schools all the other people sent their kids to? That way no kid would be left out just because his parents were too poor, lazy, drunk, stupid or some combination of that list. It had to be cheaper to make an education available that way than building lots of schools and hiring duplicate administrators, teachers, custodians and the like.

Back in those days it never occurred to me that perhaps the government schools weren't primarily designed to be for the the purpose of educating poor kids. But back then I was actually in one of those institutions so maybe it wasn't the plan for that to occur to me.

It's only been in the last few decades there has been a lot of debate about this concept so I must not have been the only one to have simple concepts not occur to them. Of course the past debates were/are usually about what gets taught in the schools and other issues, but now that children in this country have fallen so far behind much of the rest of the developed world, folks are starting to debate all kinds of things to remedy that problem. George Will wrote a piece that appeared in today's issue of the Investors Business Daily which addresses that issue with facts and figures and I highly recommend reading it. It can be found here.

In the meantime, the following video has some interesting concepts about how to pay for education and improve it at the same time that haven't gotten too much press coverage from a media obsessed by ever expanding government influence on our lives. You may agree or disagree with the concepts and as always you are encouraged to leave your thoughts on it in the comment section below.

Shovel Ready Projects From The Stimulus Program



Hat tip to Leah

 This financial crisis is forcing State and local agencies to make some tough decisions. If things continue for much longer, there's a real risk that we may have to lay off Jose.

What Rational People Think About The State of the Union Speech And Why

Many have seen the President's State of the Union Speech and the Republican response to it, but not too many have seen a non-political "what we think and why" assessment of it yet. So here is what a group of the most rational people I know of think about it.

The Ghost Of Thanksgiving Yet To Come

The following article comes under the heading of "I wish I had written that." It came to me by e-mail today via my good friend "Homer" who many of you may remember from past posts on this site. I have been getting more and more material from readers in the last year and when it ends up here I like to give kudos to those who send it.

The Ghost Of Thanksgiving Yet To Come
By Arnold Ahlert Wednesday, November 24, 2010 (From the Canada Free Press)
Reprinted with permission of the author

Winston, come into the dining room, it’s time to eat,” Julia yelled to her husband. “In a minute, honey, it’s a tie score,” he answered. Actually Winston wasn’t very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its “unseemly violence” and the “bad example it sets for the rest of the world,” Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn’t nearly as exciting.

Yet wasn’t the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another TofuTurkey. Even though it was the best type of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn’t anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of “Thanksgiving Day” to “A National Day of Atonement” in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims’ historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the TofuTurkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats—which were monitored and controlled by the electric company—be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of live-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. “The RHC’s resources are limited,” explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. “Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Ed couldn’t make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines—for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn’t want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.

Thankfully, Winston’s brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added “inconvenience” was an “absolute necessity” in order to stay “one step ahead of the terrorists.” Winston’s own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for “unequal scrutiny,” even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost.

The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. “A living Constitution is extremely flexible,” said the Court’s eldest member, Elena Kagan. “Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example,” she added.

Winston’s thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism or any of a number of other calamities were “just around the corner,” but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility.

It didn’t help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13.

The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to “spur economic growth.” This time they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what like was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life “fair for everyone” realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn’t happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them.

He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2010, when all the real nonsense began. “Maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today if we’d just said ‘enough is enough’ when we had the chance,” he thought.

Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.

Arnold Ahlert was an op-ed columist with the NY Post for eight years, currently writing for JewishWorldReview.com and FrontPageMag.com.