Category Archives: Society

Memorial Day

Posted on by

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The holiday once known as Decoration Day commemorates the men and women who perished under the flag of this country, fighting for what sets our America apart: the freedom to live as we please.

“Holiday” is a contraction of holy and day; the word originally referred only to special religious days. Here in the U.S. of A. holiday means any special day off work or school instead of a normal day off work or school.

The Uniform Holidays Bill which gave us Monday shopaholidays moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. Today is May 30 so perhaps we can shut up and salute.

Lest we forget, the Americans we honor did not “give their lives.” They did not merely perish. They did not just cease living, check out, croak, depart, drop, expire, kick off. kick the bucket, pass away or pass on, pop off, or bite the dust. Their lives were taken from them by force on battlefields around the world. They were killed. Whether you believe they died with honor, whether you believe our cause just, died they did.

Today is not a “free” day off work or school. Today is not the big sale day at the Dollar Store. Today is a day of Honor.

“All persons present in uniform should render the military salute. Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute. All other persons present should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Citizens of other countries present should stand at attention. All such conduct toward the flag in a moving column should be rendered at the moment the flag passes.”

[Image] The American flag today should first be raised to the top of the flagpole for a moment, then lowered to the half-staff position where it will remain until Noon. The flag should be raised to the peak at Noon for the remainder of Memorial Day.

There are those in this country who would use today to legislate the man out of the fight. They can do that but the men and women we honor today knew you cannot legislate the fight out of the man. They have fought and they have died to protect us from those who would kill us. And perhaps to protect us from those who would sell out our birthright.

There is no end to the mutts who would kill our men and women and would kill their own. If I had but one wish granted on this day, I wish not another soldier dies. Ever. But die they did around the world again this year and die they will. For us. For me.

Because those men and women died, I get to write these words again this year. And you get to read them. Please pause and reflect as you go to a concert, stop at an artist’s studio, or simply read a book in the sunshine the price we pay to keep our right to do those things.

Editor’s Note: This column is slightly updated from one that appeared first in 2008.

Will Free Surgery Take this Screw out of My Backside?

Posted on by

ShumpleCare = ShumlinCare. You say “rose,” I say “tomato.”

Vermonters will spend about $5 Billion on health care this year.

Last year, Harvard’s William Hsiao developed three models to reform this state’s health care system. Dr. Hsiao, an economics professor, and his team recommend a Single Payer Health Care System. It should be financed, they reported, by a payroll tax of 9% on employers plus 3.5% on workers.

The payroll tax would be imposed on all employers whether they currently provide insurance or not, whether they have a self funded ERISA plan or not. That idea scared Vermont’s largest private sector employer, IBM, which self-insures its thousands of Vermont employees as well as every small business owner in the state.

Five billion dollars.

New state revenue.

There is not a politician in the world not attracted to five billion dollars in new revenue.

The Vermont Assembly passed H.202, the UNIVERSAL AND UNIFIED HEALTH SYSTEM, last week. Governor Peter Shumlin is expected to sign it today.

ShumpleCare (H.202) has four principle components. It institutes a Health Insurance Exchange. It concocts a new bureaucracy, The Vermont Health Care Reform Board. It commits to single payer as the future of health care in Vermont. And it spawns Green Mountain Care to operate the single payer system.

Gov. Shumlin visited Northwestern Medical Center on April 25. The governor dispelled rumors of hospital closures under H.202. (He had told the St. Albans Messenger that some smaller hospitals would be closed.) Hospital CEO Jill Bowen noted that NMC and the governor “disagree on the need to understand the financial and operational details of healthcare reform before it is passed into law.”

Did Gov. Shumlin actually say there is no need to understand the financial and operational details of his healthcare reform plans before they are passed into law?

“Universal health care means universal,” David Karindler, a Vermont Workers Center organizer, said as he decried an H.202 amendment that excludes undocumented workers.

“This is the first time such hateful language has been put in legislation,” he added. “We’re all about inclusion in this state. This is about undocumented people flocking to the state. Why would they flock to a place with no housing and no jobs?”

Did Mr. Karindler actually say this is a bad law because it doesn’t cover people in this country illegally?

The Hsiao report predicted $580 million in savings. The law should spend $395 million of the expected savings to cover the uninsured and under insured, to provide basic dental and vision services, plus another $50 million to recruit new and retain current primary care providers. Wow. An extra $135 million for the Demorats to spend! Woo hoo!

Rep. George Till wouldn’t vote for ShumpleCare until the bill removed all traces of the term “single payer” and replaced it with the words “universal and unified health care system.” Wow. We changed the words. That makes it all alright. Rep. Till, a Democrat, represents Jericho, Underhill and Bolton in the Vermont State House. He is in his second term.

A rose by any other name still falls under Title 32, Chapter 233, §9772 of the universal and unified tax code.

To recap:

  • Vermont’s legislators want to control five billion new dollars each year.
  • Vermont’s governor told us not to sweat the details like cost.
  • Vermont’s lefty loons are revolting because the bill doesn’t cover illegal aliens.
  • Vermonters are left holding the bag. Again.

One great part about living in Vermont is our access to public officials. I’ve called four of the last five governors by their first names; several of them have sat in my living room. I don’t know Peter Shumlin. Yet. One great part about living in Vermont is our ability to talk to public officials. As long as they listen.

As Vermont goes, so goes the nation. Don’t say I didn’t Warn You.

Making Friends, Part I

Posted on by

Two weeks ago in Boston, Geoffrey Mutai ran the fastest marathon ever with a time of 2:03:02. He blew by the standing world-best time by 57 seconds.

I don’t know if Mr. Mutai spends much time on Facebook but Sarah Greene of St. Albans does.

Ms. Greene also ran the Boston Marathon. She used Boston to kick off her goal to raise funds for the American Stroke Association by running a marathon in each of the 50 states. She ran her first, the VT City Marathon, a couple of years ago as a member of the ASA’s Train to End Stroke in honor of her grandmother. Her Gram had suffered a massive, debilitating stroke that left long-lasting physical and cognitive deficits.

Ms. Greene is using the Facebook to get in touch with friends to coordinate her marathons, have some peeps to come to cheer and support the cause, and to find place to stay on her journey.

Making friends.

“We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world,” an insurrectionist said in Cairo.

Social media. It is our source for news. It foments revolutions. It is our source for lovers. It advertises brands. And it is the place the friends of our friends hang out.

Of the 32.7 hours per week Americans spend online, 22% is spent on social networks. That’s all? Twitter averages about 40 million tweets per day. (I did find the multi-tasking statistic fascinating: 57% of Americans watch TV and surf the Internet simultaneously.)

People meet on the ‘net all the time. They
get together, go out, have dinner, then,
you know — horrible axe murder.

Back in the Stone Age, when Usenet was the only “social network,” I met axe murderers I could never have discovered any other way.

Usenet is one of the original online systems. It started in 1980 at the University of North Carolina and at Duke more than a decade before the World Wide Web. People post “articles” that spread to groups on Internet servers around the world. Unlike the restricted friends lists in many social networks today, anyone can read and post to most newsgroups.

One writer I met on a newsgroup and later in real life was born in the former Yugoslavia, grew up in Africa, and was living in New Zealand in the time before she moved to the States to marry another writer in South Florida. They now live in Washington state. As it turns out, I’ve met a lot of reprobates at one time or another. My closest friend, Elizabeth “Liza” Arden, lives in the southwest. Peeps from Georgia and Michigan, a cop on Lon Guyland, a game developer from England, and a medical examiner from Maryland all showed up at a party in Pennsylvania. I met a Canadian who taught at UIC but has retired to Tucson on one of my trips to Arizona.

That leaves the virtual friends like the good Quaker girl from Wisconsin, a seismologist who returned the other day from Haiti, the ESL teacher in Korea, a musician in England, the Chicago nurse who emigrated to Israel, a whole raft of fruits and nuts and engineers and ordinary folk in California and Florida, a homeless man in Texas, a woman in Germany, and even a fellow in southern Vermont. And those are just some of the people I like.

So, Dick wondered, is Facebook the equal of Usenet for meeting new people? Will Sarah Greene succeed in her marathon quest for contributors and supporters?

Stay tuned.

Heck of a job, Brownie!

Posted on by

If I lived in Gaza, I’d surely be peeved.

Long ago in the tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick there hatched a plot to tap the unbelievable nation-building largesse the United States grants to pretty much anyone whom we bomb into the stone age.

The Palestinians, knowing this story, have been lobbing bombs and rocks and bullets as far as they could fling them (Israel) for 63 years or so and all that happens is that Israel spanks them.

Along come some rabble rousers in Libya (we don’t know who they are). About 63 minutes later, we send in the Tomahawks at a million bucks a pop (for a war that isn’t a war). Haliburton should be on the ground there with concrete trucks and “advisors” in six weeks.

We’re making a big mistake in Gaza as well as the North African nations now undergoing civil war. We ought not send in private contractors. We should show the entire region how the United States of America really builds nations.

It’s time to send in the big guns.

It’s time to send in FEMA.