Monthly Archives: November 2014

Giving Thanks

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Today is America’s primary pagan festival again, celebrated to show love to the gods for a bountiful harvest on a New England day in which fields are now mostly covered in snow and which George Washington proclaimed as a day of thanks as a national remembrance.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me ‘to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness’.”

While it is easy for this curmudgeonly writer to kvetch about the corruption and thievery stretching from here to Washington or to fret about the desk I write at, those are just everyday irritants and (thankfully) I know how to fix them.

I am thankful my grandfather at age 94 decided to live out his very good life in the Keys.

I am thankful I have the ability, the tools, and the wherewithall to fix the roof of the house my grandfather and parents lived out their very good lives in the Keys in.

I am thankful I started my life as an engineer and am now spending some of it as an artist.

I am thankful that Anu reminded me of a word and a writer (The Tontine by Thomas B. Costain) I have enjoyed since I started eating turkey at the grownup table.

I am thankful we will have friends here today.

I am thankful my children, my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren are happy, healthy, and will be well fed again today.

I am thankful Anne is here today and will be here tomorrow.

I am thankful for Anne and for Nancy, two loving, caring, beautiful ladies. I am blessed.

And I have pah!

This column mostly appeared last year because being thankful goes on year round. The original Thanksgiving Perspective is here.

 

Distracted

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A friend posted this: “I guarantee you’ll hear the phrase ‘My ancestors came here legally’ in the aftermath of President Obama’s immigration address. It’s almost impossible to find any conversation about immigration — between elected officials, pundits, online commenters – in which at least one participant doesn’t use the phrase.”

While the Obamanation and his Kool Aid quaffing crowd distract us with illegal executive orders and net neutrality, we still have crumbling roads and bridges, failing schools, and the slowest and most expensive Interwebs in the world.

Oh, yeah. And a still-broken healthcare system (dammit, I thought the Unaffordable Care Act was supposed to change things).

This newspeak argument over the illegal aliens the left wants to recast as “undocumented immigrants” is a decent stand-in for the criminal behavior across government.

If you are Abenaki, Eastern Pequot, or Mi’kmaq, your ancestors illegally displaced the Red Paint people. If your ancestor came over in 1642 at the invitation of Billy Penn with my greatx6 grandfather, you maybe displaced the Lenni-Lenapi. Mr. Penn had a legal charter and my greatx6 grandfather was a British subject because there was no United States. His grandson became an American citizen. His greatx2 grandson was born one. If your ancestor came in with my other great-grandfather, they used the then-normal immigration process and became citizens. They followed the law on the ground at the time.

No matter how they got here, the problem isn’t our ancestors (unless they were criminals). The problem is anyone who is here illegally now because they are criminals. The problem is this attempt on the part of so many to pretend that that ain’t so.

crim·i·nal /’krimənl/ noun
1. a person who has committed a crime.

The Obamanation has accumulated an extraordinarily long list of major crimes in just six years. The following is just the short list. If a business or a crime family got caught at all of this, we’d see million spent on RICO prosecutions.

• Mr. Obama stole General Motors from its owners and gave it to his cronies so they would vote for him. Grand theft is kind of against the law. Of course, car theft on that scale is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama stole your doctor and your health plan from you and gave it to the Big Insurance so they would pay for his election. Graft is kind of against the law. Of course, graft on that scale is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama exchanged five Taliban terrorists for an American deserter. That’s not just against policy; it’s against the law. Of course, breaking the law in the oval office is now laudable.
• Mr. Obama’s Justice Department illegally sold thousands of guns to criminals and refused to comply with congressional subpoenas about the operation. A sting is deceptive, probably unethical, but common; Fast and Furious wasn’t a sting. Supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”
• Mr. Obama’s people falsely portrayed the Benghazi terrorist attack as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim YouTube video, and then lied about White House involvement. Perjury is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”
• Mr. Obama’s IRS illegally targeted conservative groups for heightened IRS scrutiny. Using government agencies for political acts is kind of against the law. Newspeak called it merely a “management problem” — Liberals said the IRS did it to liberal groups, too.
• Mr. Obama’s IRS refunded more than $46 million to nearly 24,000 illegal aliens using the same Atlanta, GA address. Fraud is kind of against the law. Newspeak calls it merely a “management problem.”

And there you have it.

A crim·i·nal /’krimənl/ is a person who has committed a crime.

The newspeak argument to recast crimes as “hope and change” or “management problems” or “good politics” is worse than giving the burglar the keys to your house or the murderer a deadly weapon or the used car salesman your checkbook. We trust burglar and the murderer and the used car salesman to do us wrong. We’re supposed to trust those we elect to do us right.

The Obamanation has not only violated the law, they have shredded that trust.

 

Grubergate

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Yesterday’s Burlington Free Press editorial says, “First get Vermont Health Connect right.”

Editorial Page Editor Aki Soga is right that the “relaunch of the Vermont Health Connect online insurance exchange is a crucial test for Gov. Shumlin’s efforts to bring a single-payer health care system to Vermont.”

It is a crucial system test but not the right test.

Let’s recall how we got here.

Dollar Sign• 1994: Then-Gov. Howard Dean tried unsuccessfully to institute a single-payer system with then-Sen Peter Shumlin’s support.
• 2009: “If you like your plan you can keep…” Uh huh.
• 2010: Candidate Shumlin outlined his plans for a single payer health care system in 2010.
• 2012: Gov. Shumlin hired CGI Group (the same Canadian ne-er-do-well company that crafted the extraordinary healthcare.gov debacle) to do it on a smaller scale in Vermont. Vermont paid CGI about $67 million.
• 2014: Gov. Shumlin rehired Obamacare architect Jonathan (“stupidity of the American voter”) Gruber for an extra $400,000 in July to study how Vermont could squeeze an extra $2 billion out of taxpayers to fund the statewide single-payer health-care system. (Mr. Gruber also drafted much of the original single-payer system proposal in 2010.) Sadly, Mr. Gruber has never known when to shut up.
• 2014: Gov. Shumlin hired some third graders who failed arithmetic to run Health Connect billing.

I haven’t had insurance under Health Connect/Obamacare for many months. I think the third graders have stopped billing me for it although the arrearage they “calculated” for insurance I haven’t had was in the thousands of dollars.

That could have been the chosen Gruber method: bill people who don’t even have coverage for insurance premiums they don’t owe. It will take only 333,333 Vermonters paying in an average of $6,000 to come up with that $2 billion.

It is a crucial system test but not the right test.

The right test answers these three simple questions:

Does the system cover me?
Does the system improve medical results?
Does the system reduce health care costs?

That’s a system that Vermont’s liberal economists are incapable of planning (“all we need is to find $2 billion in new ‘revenue'”) and Vermont’s liberal politicians are incapable of implementing (“all we need is to find $2 billion in new ‘revenue'”).

It’s too bad Vermonters have to suffer through Grubergate with the rest of the nation, but when Vermont’s political left wants to sleep with the big dogs, they are bound to get fleas.