I have not been talking about the insanity around the debt ceiling and debt and deficit and the efforts of Republicans to drive us all off the cliff, but I am today – and I’m going to do it by allowing you to grab ahold of this problem and see for yourself just how unbelievably bad this manufactured crisis is going to be.
You will hear a lot of conversation about the consequences from others; today, however, you are going to get the chance to be both the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, and you will get to decide for yourself exactly what bills the Federal Government should and should not pay as the cash runs out if a deal is not made by the time borrowing authority runs out.
At that point you’ll be able to see what’s coming for yourself – and once you do, you won’t need me to tell you what ugly is going to look like.
So I disappeared for a full week, right in the middle of what should have been a busy writing schedule, and I have to claim some "personal days" to cover the time we missed here at the blog - but it won't be time entirely wasted.
Instead, I'm going to jump into my own personal life for today's story, and I'm going to do it so that we can stimulate some thinking about where we really need to go to if we ever hope to make some sense out of the crazy way we deliver health care in this country.
Since this appears to be the weekend that a lot of decisions are either going to be made about the future of our "social safety net"...or they wont; we're entirely unsure...let's talk about how it actually works for a lot of us - and how it could work a lot better.
By now you have heard that President Obama has chosen to throw Social Security and the Medicare and Medicaid Programs over the side of his proverbial fishing boat as bait to see if he can get Republicans to give him another really lousy compromise, much as he did last December when he gave up billions upon billions of deficit reduction in order to help Republicans preserve tax cuts for billionaires.
And it looks like the President doesn't really lose if you or I get hurt here: in fact, it seems that, in his eyes, it's to his advantage to fight against his own base as he seeks to be "the adult in the room" in the runup to the '12 election.
So we're going to have to find a way to put The Fear on this guy - and I think I've got a plan to force this President to listen.
And it works like this: if this President ain't gonna be moved by our message...we do it by holding the rest of his Party hostage.
They tell us we're dropping about $10 billion a month in Afghanistan so we can catch that Bin Laden guy...but eventually, we're gonna catch him, and as soon as we do you can imagine that folks will be wondering why we're still over there - and I gotta tell ya, I'm one of those people.
I mean, we're over here talking about how we're so broke that we have no choice but to cut a couple of billion from heat assistance for the poor, and a billion-and-a-half from the Social Security operations budget, and money from food stamps and childcare assistance and tornado forecasting in Alabama...but every single month, just as regular as clockwork, we seem to be able to find another $10 billion to spend in Afghanistan, even as we have an economy that could badly use another round of truly productive stimulus.
And I don't think y'all even realize just how much money $10 billion really is - but today we're gonna see if we can't fix that with a bit of a thought exercise.
Imagine if we set up a program that took that Afghanistan money and spent it right here at home for a year or two - and it was spent in the form of a lottery, where we stimulate the larger economy, help fix the mortgage crisis, and create a more energy-independent nation, all at the same time.
I got all we need except a catchy name; with that in mind let's move on to the description of how the Happy Super Fun Day Peace Lotto Stimulus Thingy works.
Oh, my, has there been a lot of news since we spoke last about the Potential Impending Death Of Medicare: obviously we're going to have to talk about the implications of Osama Bin Laden's death (but we'll do that another day), President Obama very publicly congratulated Donald Trump for having the leadership skills to know that Gary Busey was the one who needed to be fired after the way he ran the men's cooking team on "The Apprentice", and, of course, there was that "extreme ironing incident" on the M1 near London's Mill Hill.
But what you may not have noticed is that in the past two weeks the Grim Weeper himself, Speaker of the House John Boehner, has gone from saying "I fully support Paul Ryan's budget, including on Medicare" to saying that the Paul Ryan "Let's Kill Medicare" plan is "an idea ... worthy of consideration"-and when that happens that quickly you know somebody applied what we might politely describe as being at least "an equal and opposite force".
And what I'm here to suggest today is that the opposite force in question...is you.
We are continuing a recent theme here today in which two of my favorite topics are going to converge: Social Security and in-your-face political activism.
I have been encouraging folks to take advantage of the recent Congressional recess to have a few words with your CongressCritter about the proposed Death Of Medicare and all the proposed cuts to Social Security...and you have, as we'll discuss...and now we have an opportunity to do something on a national scale, just as we did a few weeks ago in support of Social Security.
This time, we're going to concentrate on fighting the idea that retirement ages should go up before we become eligible for Social Security and Medicare (and elements of Medicaid, as well), and that Americans should just keep right on working until the age of 67 or so-which isn't going to be any big problem...really...trust us.
Now that just makes no sense, and to help make the point we have a really cool video that you can pass around to all your friends-and your enemies, for that matter, since they'll also have to worry about what happens to them if they should ever make it to old age.
We are coming down to the home stretch on healthcare, and we have seen the results of the first couple of rounds of crazy that have been sent forth in an effort to stop the process.
In addition to the Town Halls, opponents are flooding the email inboxes of America's "low information" voters with no end of lies. Those emails are getting passed around and around and around, and by now some of them have probably appeared in your inbox.
But it's summer...and who has time to respond to this stuff?
Well, guess what, Gentle Reader: I've already done the hard work for you.
Today's story is an email response that you can send right back to your "inbox friends". It's a reminder of some of the frustrations that we all share in this country and some explanations of what's being proposed...and a few words about socialism, to boot.
So get out there and copy and paste and forward and reply, and let's see if we can't fight the madness, one email at a time.
I don't know if you've been thinking about it, but the costs of long-term care have been on the mind of some friends of mine lately.
For reasons that we won't go into here, they are in the process of pricing long-term care at care facilities...and yesterday afternoon, we had a chance to have a look at the "menu" of services (the facility's term) that can be purchased at this particular location.
If you are facing this issue in your own family, if you are a taxpayer thinking about how we plan to fund long-term care in the future...or if, one day, you expect to be old yourself...this conversation will surely matter.
This is what we've got going on in our nation's economy:
A debt that has grown $7,700,000,000,000 during the Bush Administration
A war in Iraq that is costing $10,000,000,000 a month
A health care system, Medicare, that eats up $340,000,000,000 a year
A global warming crisis with national security and environmental ramifications which worsen EVERY DAY
The failure of 3 of the Big 5 on Wall Street - Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch - in the last 8 months
And this is what John McCain has to say about our economy:
Seriously, John McCain doesn't get it. Nor does Mrs. Palin, but that's another post ... if we vote for this team of liars, we deserve the lack of change they will bring us over the next four years.
When Bobby Jindal was only 24 years old, he was appointed by Governor Mike Foster to the most important health care position in the State of Louisiana, Secretary of Health and Hospitals. During his short tenure as Secretary, Louisiana dropped from 48th to 50th (dead last) in our national health care rankings, which is ironic considering how often candidate Jindal speaks about taking Louisiana off of all of the "bad lists."
In an attempt to "rapidly" respond to criticisms of Jindal's record on health care, Timmy Teepell, Jindal's campaign manager, issued a press release on August 13th, ostensibly to debunk some of the "myths" about Jindal's record. But as Teepell's response proves, Jindal cannot hide from his own record, and the lame attempts to justify Jindal's past decisions are easily disproven by anyone with a little time and a connection to the Internet.
Teepell writes:
We knew that the defenders of the status quo would fight Bobby Jindal’s war on corruption every step of the way. It is not surprising that they have already resorted to misrepresenting reality and rewriting history. Bobby has a strong record on strengthening health care and supporting our nation’s veterans, and nasty attack ads from the old-guard party bosses can’t change it. This ad is just more proof of what we already know, those who don’t want change in Louisiana will do anything to fight against it.
Teepell would have us believe that anyone who has questioned Jindal's record on health care and veterans affairs is somehow a part of the "old-guard" who would like to maintain the "status quo." Well, I, for one, am not a part of any old-guard, and when reviewing Mr. Jindal's record, I cannot find any evidence of a man who has championed bold changes in health care or has "fought" the well-documented corruption of America's health care and pharmaceutical lobbies.
Like pointecoupeedemocrat has done with another one of Teepell's misleading "rapid responses," let us review the issues highlighted in Teepell's press release on health care "pointe by pointe."
