Not My Cup of Tea

It's tea party time again, and the rabble-rousers are out in force.  Tiresomely so.

They offer little besides pointless rants.  They scream about taxes being too high, but don't recognize that about half of households in the US pay no net taxes.  The ones that do rant about paying taxes for someone else.  But they seldom inconvenience themselves with facts.

The simple facts are that individuals pay some of the lowest taxes as a percentage of GDP in about 50 years.  Corporations, who whine incessantly about taxes pay less than they have since 1936.  The dollar amount may be more, but their income has gone up geometrically since then, thus the taxes.

I don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else.  But I realize that without them, my partner might not have medical coverage through the VA.  Or my mother's Social Security check might not show up.

Americans are taxed at a lower rate than most industrialized counties.  25-30% is the norm for them.  Plus VAT taxes.

The average tax rate in the US is under 7%.  Since we have one of the highest poverty levels of any industrialized first-world country, we collect less tax per person than just about anybody.

We also have the dubious distinction of having one of the highest rates of the “working poor” of any modern country.  The “working poor” often do not pay any taxes.  Because they have no money.  It might be evidence of a progressive tax system, but it doesn’t pay the rent.

Those are the facts, inconvenient as they might be. 

I pay more than that, but I also live above the poverty level.  Jesus said that "for everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required." (Luke 12:48)

I can't argue with Him.  One seldom wins arguments with a deity.

That religious belief translates into a political position.

Any time any politician has tried to take power from corporate interests, the corporations have launched fear campaigns aimed at the sheep who largely make up the Tea Party movement.  They believe the half-truths and out-right lies that come from the right.  They don’t question the disinformation or even think about the broader picture.

They may have some education, but I'm left to wonder what good came from educating them to be sheep.  They seem to lack the perspective that leads to independent thought.  I was taught in college to be an independent thinker.  That quality is the primary benefit of education.

Personally, I'm mad as hell at what has happened to our economy and how it happened. The last administration turned a blind eye to the avalanche about to bury us.  Greed ran unregulated and unchecked.  People lost their jobs, their homes, their cars and everything else they had.  They still are, but at a slower pace than last month.

They had to start over again, whether they were 30 or 60 years old.

But I am not a sheep.  I will go back to the New Testament again:  "Having eyes, see you not? and having ears, hear you not? and do you not remember?" (Mark 8:18)  I was not raised to be a sheep, and I won't ever be one.  My parents did a better job than they probably wanted to:  I question every thing and want to get to the truth, not just to the "easy".  I’m what they call in the South “mouthy”.

Easy blame is flying down the streets these days.  It's almost a traffic hazard.  And the primary proponents and instigators of it are the corporations and corrupt politicians who spin dishonesty and greed into a good thing. But I hate to tell all the Gordon Gekko’s, “Greed is not good”.

It pollutes the soul.  It corrupts the mind.  It distorts reality.  It does nothing to edify the individual or benefit the larger society that we belong to, whether we want to acknowledge that we belong to one or not.

My well-being is tied to my neighbor's well-being.  Theirs is tied to their neighbors'.  At the end of the day, I live in the middle of a massive web of interdependence.  As do we all.

If you want to protest, set up camp outside Goldman-Sachs, the surviving investment bank that will become the paradigm of greed and fraud that got us where we are.  If you can find AIG (since they conveniently got rid of all signage everywhere), sit at their front door.  Find a Lehman's executive and camp out across the street to keep him company during his early, unexpected retirement.

Those are the real villains in this horror story; that a small group of old men screwed an entire national economy and an entire nation befuddles me, still.

If you want to vent, vent on them and not on the people who are trying to pick up the pieces and look out for your best interests.  Quit whining and do something constructive.  Recognize and deal with the bitter irony that the rabid deregulation that began with Reagan led us to this point:   right off the cliff into the proverbial abyss.

Assign blame where it's due.  Don't be sheep.  That's the easiest but ultimately most insincere path.

Have your tea party and then tell me what you accomplished.  What did you do?  Other than cost everyone else money to provide protection so you could rant?  What accomplishments do you have to show for your rabble-rousing?

Go after the people who created the problem, not the ones that are trying to fix it.

Be mad, but be careful where you direct your anger.  Go after the real problem, not the easy target.  Do something that matters.  Don’t just bitch.  Do what is difficult and not simply what is convenient.

I’m mad, myself.  In the words of the immortal Dixie Chicks, “I’m not ready to make up.  I’m not ready to make nice.  I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take it any more.”  That anger leads me to support financial reform, but it doesn’t come between me and common sense.  I can be pissed off about the bailouts while recognizing that they were necessary to keep the entire global economy from imploding. 

If the TP movement had any substance, it would look beyond anger and see the “what-if-not” reality.  It would be focusing on providing solutions instead of simply ranting.  It would be constructive, not destructive.  It would seek to thoughtfully edify, not recklessly tear down.

To date, it has done nothing positive.  It refuses to recognize the complexity of the financial crisis or where its origins lie.  It refuses to recognize that a total meltdown was averted.  That the country is in much better shape than it was a year ago.

In the words of Shakespeare, “it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

As I said, I’m mad, but I’m not an idiot.  I know how and why the economy collapsed, more so than I want to.  And I know why bailouts were necessary.  Distasteful, but necessary.  I had to swallow a lot of bile when it became abundantly clear that, without intervention, the entire financial system in the US would collapse, dragging the global economy down with it.

I didn’t like it, and still don’t, but intervention was the lesser of two evils.

The effects of not bailing out AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, GM, Chrysler and others would have been catastrophic.  The markets would have remained in free-fall for much longer than they did, and ordinary people would not have recovered billions and possibly trillions in losses to retirement portfolios.

Extraordinary times have always called for extraordinary actions.  That is not a new concept.  It goes back as far as recorded history.  But it’s one that the TPer’s refuse to accept.  Or, perhaps, have never considered.  I have to wonder sometimes what dark closet they stumbled out of with no historical frame of reference.

And I also wonder how many of them have consistently done their duty to vote.  If they are so virulently opposed to apparently everyone in elected office, where were they when the votes to elect them were being cast?  I have voted since I could because I’ve believed it gives me a legitimate place from which to bitch about politicians I don’t like.  I didn’t vote for them.  But I voted.  So I’m entitled to bitch.

This mess that we’re all trying to put back together didn’t get to be a mess overnight.  It is the byproduct of lax oversight meeting overt greed.  The house of cards we started building 10 years ago couldn’t support its own weight and finally collapsed.  It took the economy with it.

Franklin Roosevelt had a tough re-election after his first term.  We were not yet at war, and the Depression was still raging.  During that time, he invented the “fire-side chats” to talk directly to the American people by radio, a technology that was in its infancy.  He baby-sat an entire country through the worst financial disaster in its history.  He was the Cheerleader-in-Chief.

That’s why I voted for Obama.  Not because of policy, although I believed healthcare was important and needed to addressed directly.  I voted for him because of his message of hope.  By the time of the primaries, I could see that we were on the precipice of a disaster.  Things were bad, but I knew they were going to get worse.

We needed hope, and he offered it.

To the Tea Party, I would say that either you elected them or you didn’t vote.  That you have unrealistic expectations from a government that you either voted for or didn’t.  (One’s as bad as the other.)  That you helped get us into this mess but want to blame it on everyone else now that the tea is ready to serve.

Cuppa?

Tinkle, Tinkle Little Star

Now that health care reform has passed, a new poll suggests that disaffection with the legislation doesn't approach the levels the GOP keeps referring to.  49% of Americans support the plan, while only 40% oppose it.  I'm guessing the other 11% doesn't care one way or the other.

Between the people that approve of the legislation and those who don't care one way or the other, it's 60% to 40%.

Those numbers in no way reflect the numbers the GOP keeps citing.  The majority either supports it or doesn't care by 20 points.  Who, exactly, is upset other than them?  And how much longer do they think misinformation and scare tactics will work?

While 13 state AG's are filing lawsuits that question the constitutionality of the bill, I'm not sure they will be successful.  Their argument is that the government cannot force any one to purchase a product the person doesn't want to pay for. 

However, mandatory car insurance has been largely the law of the land for years.  Car insurance is mandatory because it mandates financial responsibility and serves a greater public good than allowing people to drive without it. 

Mandatory health insurance falls in the same category.  Mandating it serves a large enough public purpose to make doing so constitutionally justifiable.  That is the basis of the laws that require liability insurance for vehicle owners. 

My prediction:  the GOP will continue to foam at the mouth, mislead and just outright lie.  Their lawsuits will be dismissed and probably not be heard by the Supremes.  Their tactics will become increasingly questionable.

Just about any healthcare bill that passes is almost 100 years overdue.  Teddy Roosevelt first proposed it, and his cousin, Theodore, pursued it.  As did Truman and even Nixon.  Nixon thought it was good idea.  And I never thought I'd agree with him about anything. 

We spend more and have poorer outcomes than any country in the industrialized world.  Mostly because we treat too many people in emergency rooms who would have been better served by a GP long before they end up in an ER with acute and critical problems. 

I've spent more times in emergency rooms that I want to think about.  And I've also seen more people using them as a primary care facility than makes sense. 

Getting those people out of the ER would probably save enough to keep many hospitals from contemplating bankruptcy.  It would certainly improve their balance sheets.  Treating someone in an emergency costs significantly more than the cost of preventative and diagnostic care from a GP. 

Our current healthcare system reminds me of a Churchill quote about Russia:  "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma".  Our health care system is arbitrary and confusing in much the same way.  People who need it can't get it, and people that have it pay too much for it.  They subsidize all those emergency room visits that could be better-addressed by a GP and lead to better patient outcomes than those emergency room visits provide for less money.

I'm also reminded of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" where some animals are more equal than others. 

The healthcare debate (if you can call what happens in the legislature debate instead of endless sound bites) boils down to two issues:  social justice and fiscal responsibility. 

Allowing the cost of health care to continue to spiral out of control is not fiscally responsible.  It is negligent on every front.  While the cost of health care accounts for 1/6th of our economy today, doing nothing will send that out-of-scale ratio even higher.  All that, while, as a country, we have almost the least accessible health care in the industrialized world.

Over and above this floats social justice.  Although that isn't a concept that most (if not all) of the GOP understands.  What it means is that, if you are sick, you should be able to see a doctor and be treated, regardless of your income.  It means that you shouldn't have to wait until you're dying of cancer to get a diagnosis or treatment until things have progressed so far that you only have weeks to live.

That is not hypothetical situation.  I lived through it.  I lost someone very dear to me who didn't have insurance.  When he finally got a job with insurance benefits, he was immediately diagnosed with cancer and only lived another 8 weeks or so.  It was too far gone.  Had he been diagnosed earlier, treatment would have had a good chance of success. 

In all the hoo-hah and posturing surrounding the debate, we lost sight of the fundamental fact central to the whole mess:  those without insurance delay treatment until they end up in an emergency room or just die, and those with insurance end up paying for it.  The cost of treating uninsured patients that gets passed on to the insured amounts to an indirect tax on health care.  People say they don't want to pay for other people's health care, but they already are.

A reasonable health plan for me costs a little over $600 a month.  I pay 25% of that.  To insure a dependent, my cost would go to $900 or so a month.  To insure a family, 60% of my pay would go to health insurance.

And I consider myself lucky to have the coverage that I have.  But I thank the Lord that I do not have to provide it for anyone else.  I couldn't afford it.

Those facts cannot be denied.

And one, in good conscience, cannot deem people without coverage as "irresponsible".  They're generally just poor, making minimum wage or a little more, if that.  If they even have a job.

If they're lucky enough to have a job, it probably doesn't come with insurance, and if it does, it's too expensive.

I went without health insurance for over a decade.  When I had to see a doctor, it cost at least $150-250 between fees and prescriptions.  Sometimes, I just didn't go to the doctor at all and hoped things got better.  I didn't have the money. 

When one has to choose between a doctor and rent, the doctor usually loses, because at least you're left with a place to be miserable in if you pay the rent.

While the need for universal health coverage should be obvious to anyone who looks at the situation from an objective view, providing it is mired in partisan rhetoric that embraces the word "socialism" too freely.  Universal health care is not socialism:  it's humanitarianism.

Treating people like humans. 

Throughout the healthcare reform fracas, I've been stunned by one thing:  the federal government already runs one of the most efficient health care systems in the world.  And no one has noticed.

The VA system was once a mine field of paperwork and inefficiency, but it has transformed itself into a system that provides some of the best care money can buy.  It's easily as good as what costs $600 a month to cover me.  It's an efficient system that concentrates on treating patients. 

It requires them to have a physical every six months.  The VA realized that getting a patient in the last few months of cancer would be much more expensive to treat and likely have a worse outcome than diagnosing earlier.  Finding the problem earlier would not only save them money, but would lead to a higher quality of life for the patient.  One that means being above ground, and not 6 feet under.

The VA has rationed care, to be certain.  But so has my private health insurance company.  I’m waiting for an appointment with a specialist because I can’t hear with my left ear.  A simple ear infection turned into something else, but I have to wait for over 2 weeks to see one a specialist about it. 
Some people seem to think that "social justice" equals "socialism" when nothing could be farther from the truth. 

With all the hoo-hah, amidst lies, disinformation and scare tactics, things have moved beyond the ridiculous into the scary.  Legislators and their families are being threatened with physical harm and/or death.  The opposition tactics have moved from merely the uncivil well into the unacceptable. 

My hope is that the rabble-rousers will be their own undoing.  The more the GOP and the Tea Party movement come to resemble the Nazi Party, the more damage they will do to themselves.  I pray that they self-destruct.

The cracks are already starting to appear.  The American Enterprise Institute (a conservative think tank) fired David Frum for an opinion piece he did that criticized the GOP and Tea Partiers for the way they handled the health care debate.  Even his credentials as a former Bush speechwriter didn’t save him.

The party of “NO!” is becoming the party of “no dissent”, one that has no room for criticism or self-reflection.  Such a rigid stance alienates moderates, whom we all know determine most elections.  They don’t like rigid, extreme stances from either side of the aisle.  That’s why we call them “moderates”. 

Radical opponents of health care reform are on the wrong side of opinion, ethics, morality and history.  They may scream loud, but the rhetoric amounts to the “tinkling cymbal” that 1 Corinthians speaks of:  “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” 

They are sounding brass that amounts to a tinkling cymbal.

My hope and prayer is that they tinkle on themselves.

A Living Legend Whose Time Expired

Liz Carpenter died over the weekend. After 89 years, she went on to what she described as “that great Democratic convention in the sky”.  She was among the last of the colorful, outspoken and just plain ornery women that spiced up, first, Texas politics and, later, the country’s. 

She once described herself as a "foot-washing, Psalm-singing, total immersion Democrat”.  She didn’t take prisoners and could turn a phrase in a way that left many of her opponents wondering what they just got hit by.  Surely not that little old lady from Texas.

Her insight, charm, wit and tenaciousness served her well over the years.  More importantly, it served the people of her state and her country.  As part of the Ladybird Johnson, Ann Richards and Molly Ivins gang of 4, she spoke her mind and tried to help her fellow human beings along the way. 

She was a force to reckoned with.

The last of the grand dames of Texas politics has passed, but I hope that her life, like those of her compadres, will inspire plain-speaking, foot-washing girls to become larger than life in the pursuit of both a more perfect union and a more socially-just one.  To speak their minds plainly and simply.  To call injustice what it is when they see it.

I hate that she didn’t get to see the health care bill passed.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if it brings her back from the dead.  The healthcare bill was almost 100 years in the making.  It’s arguably the most important legislation in my lifetime.  It’s got to at least have her rolling around a little.

Barring a resurrection, I honor her for her contributions to her state and her country.  She was a great lady, but she was not ours to keep.

Rest in peace, Ms. Carpenter.  But keep raisin’ hell.  I don’t know if I should expect anything other.  And say “Hi” to Ann and Molly and Ladybird, if you get the chance.  Tell them that we won the fight. 

Life will be forever duller without all of you.  We’re stuck with Kay Bailey and her Dallas ear well hairdos.  She’s about as much fun as a wet blanket on a cold night in December.  She leaves me wondering when my toes are going to fall off from the chill that seems to pour off her.

And we won’t even talk about Rick Perry.  I’m a little old-fashioned and don’t like to use extreme profanity in front of ladies.  And that’s what it would be.

I have to close, because I think I need to go wash my feet. 

May God bless you and keep you and always hold you close to his heart.  May you go on to your greater reward, something I have no doubt will happen.

It will be big.  I have no doubt about that, either.

Rest.  In peace.  Forever.

Unless you don't want to,

Saving Time

Once again, daylight saving time finds me a zombie with a body clock out of sync with much of everything.  It’s only 8:12, but my watch says it’s an hour later.  And it’s not an hour later:  it’s the same time it’s always been, but we call it something different.

Anyone who actually thinks about it should be able to realize what an exercise in futility it is to even try to get a handle on time, much less get ahead of it.  Daylight saving time is arbitrary and capricious at best.   There is no solid evidence it does much besides getting on my nerves.

And there’s more than abundant evidence for that.

If it were possible to save day light, I’d try to catch some, stick it in a bag and sell it.  It would go on the shelf right next to “Time in a Bottle.”

The entire concept is outmoded and counter-productive.  It costs more in lost productivity than it could ever recoup by promoting the use of natural lighting.  When I have to rely on natural lighting at my office, I pull out a flashlight.  That’s the only way I don’t trip over things I can’t see where the daylight I was saving didn’t make it.

Daylight saving time is a relic that needs to be relegated to the ash-heap of history.  Perhaps it once served a purpose, but those days are far behind us.  It now costs more than it saves.

We are no longer a nation of farmers.  Most of us work in places where the sun’s coming up and going down makes little to no difference.  We work until we’re done under artificial lighting.  When the sun comes up or goes down doesn’t affect that one iota.

If farmers need more time to get things done, tell them to get out of bed earlier.  Don’t impose their schedules on me.

If anyone can tell me why daylight saving time is a good idea, I would welcome the input.  I can’t find a reason.  At least not one that makes sense.

It’s time to put this one out of it’s misery,  And mine as well.