Delusions of Grandeur

I’m told the world came to an end at about 11:00 p.m. Sunday night. Yet for some reason I still had to go to work today. Doesn’t seem fair.

In case you haven’t heard, the House of Representatives passed the previously approved Senate version of the healthcare reform bill, making it the law of the land once President Obama signs it on Tuesday. For the first time in 45 years, the United States of America has instituted meaningful healthcare reform. And it’s not like we haven’t been trying. Since the passage of Medicare in 1965, seven Presidents have either denied and ignored the problems with the system, or tried and failed to reform it. Only one succeeded. This one.

The day before the vote, House Minority Leader John Boehner claimed the country was “24-hours away from Armageddon.” To hear Republicans and their supporters talk, you could be forgiven if you thought Hitler’s armies were stationed on the Mexican border with Stalin’s armies stretched across the Canadian border waiting for the count to reach 216 so they could begin the invasion. Only minutes after the vote was cast, Minnesota Republican Representative lunatic Michelle Bachmann promised to introduce a bill to repeal the legislation that has yet to become law. Bachmann is apparently unaware that repeal of healthcare reform would require a signature from the same President who signed the bill into law in the first place.

The Republican Party has stepped out onto a ledge they can never crawl in from. They have created a tidy little fantasy world for themselves and their followers. A world in which they can have anything their hearts desire, without ever having to pay a dime for any of it. Throughout the year-long discussion of this legislation, Republicans have repeatedly insisted that they are indeed in favor of some version of healthcare reform. Just for the sake of argument, let’s take them at their word. They claim to be in favor of eliminating the practice of denial of coverage due to illness or pre-existing conditions. They claim to be in favor of creating high-risk pools for people who cannot get insurance. They support tax-breaks to employers to provide insurance for their employees. And they claim to support eliminating the annual and lifetime caps placed on coverage by insurers. All those items are currently covered by the reform bill. What they do not support is any method of paying for all those wonderful ideas.

Mitt Romney gets very upset every time someone points out that the healthcare reform plan he decries as socialist evil bears a striking resemblance to the near-universal coverage, individual mandate, healthcare exchange-laded plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts. He waves his finger indignantly and points out that his plan did not in any way, shape or form cut waste within the system, or increase fees or taxes on the citizens of his former adopted state. And he is mostly right. Romney’s healthcare reform plan contained no mechanism with which to pay for itself. That’s why, only three years on, the program is nearly bankrupt, and will very shortly need to come up with some way to keep itself in the black. Republicans have carefully constructed a narrative that insists they can provide whatever the public demands of its government without anyone ever having to shell out a dime to pay for any of it. Call it the Wal-mart mentality. Buy one get two free. Better yet, buy none get the rest for no price. But the truth is, those two candy bars you bought for 99 cents, were really only worth 49-and-a-half cents a piece. Nothing in this life is free. Everything costs money. And things of value cost a little more money than things nobody cares about. Of course healthcare reform costs money. If it didn’t it would be worthless. So in addition to all those things in this bill the Republicans claim to support, are some measures that attempt to cover the cost of some of those items, instead of simply borrowing money from our grandchildren, like the very same Republicans who are now setting themselves up as the vanguard of fiscal responsibility did with No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan and the Iraq and Afghan wars.

For more on what this healthcare reform bill actually is, please see the following article:
www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/obamas-moderate-health-care-plan

One more note on fiscal responsibility. While president Bush was running up a trillion dollar deficit, spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq, and funding both wars with borrowed money he refused to include in the federal budget in order to make his numbers look better, Karl Rove got on television and told us all that “deficits don’t matter.” Yet even before Chief Justice Roberts had finished administering the oath of office to President Obama, Republicans were moaning about the terrible debt load of the United States and demanding spending be chopped all over the place to bring the numbers under control. Why it is that there always seems to be plenty of money to blow things up, yet never enough money for a check-up? Why it is so much more palatable for certain people in this country to pay for weapons that kill people in other countries than to pay for medicine to heal people in this country?

In perhaps the most bizarre story of the week, at about 7 p.m. last Thursday evening, a voice came over the public address system of a Wal-mart store in New Jersey calmly announcing the following; “Attention Wal-mart customers: All black people leave the store now.” I will admit to visiting a Wal-mart once or twice in my life, and I don’t recall ever hearing anything like that announced in the store, so more than a few people were more than a little upset. Wal-mart immediately issued numerous apologies and police later arrested the 16-year-old idiot responsible for the prank, but this stands as a lesson to any business with a public address system. Microphones can be dangerous. Keep them away from teenagers at all times.

And now for the lighter side of the news.

Tiger Woods gave his first interview since 2009 to ESPN last week, from which we learned absolutely nothing more than we already knew. He refused to answer (as he should have) questions regarding why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway and what he said in his apology to his wife and all sorts of other things the general public has no business knowing. Following the five minute interview with Tiger, the ESPN anchor in Bristol interviewed the reporter who had just finished interviewing Tiger to ask him for his thoughts on the interview he had just conducted. The reporter proceeded to lament the fact that Tiger had refused to explain why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway, because he felt people really wanted to know that. If he is right, if people really are desperate to hear Tiger explain why he crashed into the tree at the end of his driveway, I sincerely fear for journalism in this nation.

Anyone else tired of watching the media cover the healthcare debate like it’s a basketball game?

After promising employees at a Cadbury candy factory in England that their plant would not be closed when Kraft Foods purchased the company, Kraft Foods has decided to close the plant. Surprise! If they screw up the Creme Egg I’m filing a lawsuit.

The city of Detroit will close 44 schools within the city limits due to dwindling attendance and lack of funding. This comes on the heels of news that agriculture companies are buying up entire vacant blocks of the city, tearing down the abandoned houses and planting crops on the land. There is a movement is some depressed cities like Detroit to “right size” themselves, to reduce the physical area of the city for which the government will be responsible for providing services, in order to bring costs in line with their budgets. As strange as planting crops in what used to be neighborhoods sounds, I think it might be a good idea. For decades Detroit has been in decline. The remaining population is simply no longer large enough to support the infrastructure of a city with only about half the population it once had. Contraction might give them the breathing room they need in order to recover from years of economic decay.

New England Patriots defensive end Ty Warren will forgo a $250,000 work out bonus to return to school and finish his degree this spring and summer. I realize a quarter of-a-million dollars isn’t much compared to the rest of his salary, or the salaries of many of the other players in the league, but it is still a quarter-of-a-million dollars. In a world where most star athletes leave school early to play sports, it’s nice to stumble across the Ty Warrens and Myron Rolles (Rhodes Scholar) of the world who actually place some value on the education so many others are in such a hurry to leave behind.

NASCAR has given its drivers the green light to intentionally wreck each other during races. Oh yes. This sounds like a great idea. What could possibly go wrong with this? My guess is this will last until somebody’s car goes airborne into the stands and crushes a few people. I can hear the lawyers now.

Finally, remember the E-Trade commercials, with the creepy digital baby with the adult voice telling you to get with the program and start investing with E-Trade? Remember the one where he’s talking to the other digital baby over the internet and he trying to explain that he didn’t call her the night before because he was checking his E-Trade account? And the other baby says, “And that milk-a-holic Lindsay wasn’t over?” Then a third digital baby - I guess Lindsay - pops up on screen and says, “Milk-a-whaaaa?” Lindsay Lohan (remember her?) has filed suit against E-Trade for 100 million dollars, claiming that the boyfriend-stealing, “milk-a-holic” baby in the commercial is actually modeled after her and is defaming to her character. Sigh. There are at least three pretty obvious reasons - among oh so many others - why her lawsuit has no merit. First, baby Lindsay steals boyfriends, not girlfriends, a fairly significant difference for adult Lindsay. Second, baby Lindsay wears a diaper in public, whereas adult Lindsay can’t seem to remember to wear her underwear when she leaves the house. And third, baby Lindsay is reportedly a “milk-a-holic,” not an alcoholic as adult Lindsay is reported to be. I understand that money is tight in this economy. But there must be less embarrassing ways for Miss Lohan to make ends meet than to claims she’s been parodied by a digital baby.