Category Archives: What? Are They Nuts?

Will Free Surgery Take this Screw out of My Backside?

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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.

A Nation of Suggestions

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The immigration debate moves to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday in a challenge to the Arizona law that punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. Court watchers expect that this action will signal how the court might handle the more expansive Arizona immigration enforcement law SB1070.

The governator of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger turned down a commencement address in Arizona last May because “with his accent, he was afraid they would try to deport him back to Austria.”

I suggested then that we should, perhaps, boycott Los Angeles since that whole city had lined up to encourage blatantly illegal behavior.

Arizona’s law requires employers to verify the eligibility of new workers through a federal database. Arizonans hoped it would shrink their status as the center of immigrant smuggling.

“Immigrants can’t ‘steal jobs’ nobody else wants,” my friend Lido “Lee” Bruhl suggested. “If it weren’t for the guest workers, all those jobs would go to Mexico or someplace else overseas.”

Huh?

“And don’t even get me started on the so-called ‘economic burden’ of immigrants,” he continued. “The reverse is actually true. They receive less health care, less welfare, less public schooling than our own downtrodden do. Immigration actually improves economic conditions, because those so-called ‘illegal’ immigrants spend money on the same things everybody else does.”

Yeppers. Like coyotes. And sending money back to the economy of Mexico.

Um, Lee? Hello, Lee? Earth to Lee?

Congress has jinkered with how aliens may cross the border and with immigration policy since the Naturalization Act of 1790. Back then, only “free white persons” of “good moral character” could become naturalized. Fortunately for them, most of today’s Congressmen are native born. Congress increased the residency requirement to five years in 1795, a requirement remains the law of the land to this day.

The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 has been amended many times and is contained in the United States Code as the basic body of immigration law. That law defines who is an alien and delineates the rights, duties, and obligations of aliens in the United States. The alien must establish that he is admissible to the United States as an immigrant. It’s the law.

“That doesn’t matter,” Lee said. “These people are here now.”

Ignorance can be fixed.
Stupidity is forever.

“Our border with Canada is the longest nonmilitarized border in the world,” INS Executive Associate Commissioner Michael A. Pearson told Congress in 1999. “This border, however, is not unmonitored or uncontrolled. The INS maintains 114 Ports-of-Entry (POEs), 8 Border Patrol Sectors, and 44 Patrol stations along the 3,987 miles of border with Canada (excluding Alaska).” The INS maintains another 43 Ports-of-Entry along our 1,969 miles of border with Mexico.

Perhaps Lee would like those Ports of Entry emptied so people guest workers can simply walk across anywhere.

I understand why liberals like Lee don’t geddit.

Laws are only advisory.If your Congress decrees that an evil, dirty, dark business must or a nasty, rich Republican baron must give up property or starve Mexicans by increasing ethanol in gasoline, why then those laws must be enforced.

On the other hand, if the other Congress, the one made up of evil, dirty, dark businesses and nasty, rich Republican barons decrees that crossing the border is illegal, why those laws are safe to ignore.

By George, I geddit now.

Off With Their Heads?

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Fifth-grade teacher Rigoberto Ruelas committed suicide in Los Angeles in September.

The California teacher was found dead in a ravine after the Los Angeles Times released a database that ranked teachers by name. Mr. Ruelas, whom colleagues said was “so dedicated that he spent much of his personal time outside school working with students,” was listed as “less effective than average” based on how his students did on standardized tests.

Less effective than average.

My party-wall neighbor just had the plumber in. Earnie Alexander had to dig a tunnel under the house to repair a broken sewer pipe. I’m hoping that Earnie is more effective than average. Otherwise my feet are likely to get wet. And stinky.

Less effective than average.

Our friend Tom “Parle-vous” Parlett is a nuclear engineer who worked (note the past tense) for one of the few remaining Fortune 500 manufacturers of power plants. A few years ago, looking for a way to reduce payroll, his employer implemented forced ranking. The intense yearly evaluations identified Parle-vous as “less effective than average.” That bottom 10 percent set him up for a buyout which he took.

I don’t like forced ranking because it decimates morale. But the first half of the equation, the intense yearly evaluations to measure achievement, tells us whether or not we are doing out jobs. (Parle-vous is now the top performer in a different organization.)

We don’t have a big pot of money to offer [teachers] to sign off on performance contracts, Monroe County School Board Chair John Dick told Anne O’Bannon this morning on the Morning Mix. Means there will be no way to tell if we are doing our jobs in the Keys.

Less effective than average.

A Broward County history teacher wrote to the Miami Herald ombudsman about the suicide. “Ruelas will not be the only teacher casualty if … attacks [in the news media] continue,” that teacher wrote. “…You will see that the coverage has been overwhelmingly pro ‘reform,’ with teachers getting much criticism. There has been very little defense of teachers.”

Huh.

A teacher commits suicide because it suddenly became public that he maybe wasn’t as good at what he did as his press kit said he was.

Toyota advertises that, nationwide, 80% of all their cars sold in the last 12 years are still on the road (of course that means that about 19,000,000 cars have been abandoned, crushed, or sunk in lakes around Chicago). Nationwide, 7,000 students drop out every day and only about 70 percent of students graduate from high school with a regular high school diploma (of course that means 16,800,000 of today’s students will end up on the dole). Nationwide, Toyota’s recall troubles over gas pedals and other sudden acceleration glitches standing at at least 5.3 million vehicles across much of their product line (of course, that means 85 percent of recent Toyotas with probably won’t kill their passengers but 15 percent could).

Less effective than average.

Congress very nearly demanded Akio Toyoda commit hara-kiri.

Teachers demanded raises.

244

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A list of Barack Obama’s 244 “accomplishments” in his first 655 days in office has gone viral amongst Liberals and Progs. Here’s one example. You can Google all the others on your own.

No, I don’t know why there are 244 and not 655 “accomplishments” on the list. Maybe he didn’t want to admit to the rest.

What, are they nuts? I can’t be arsed to do it line by line but these people are publishing party-line political doubletalk. It ain’t hard to refute and I didn’t even bother with the Armed Forces or ObamaCare.

ETHICS
• as much as possible
Government speak for “tell ’em what they want to hear as often as you need to.” Now that’s change I can believe in.

• limits on lobbyists’ access to the White House
Only our guys can get in; the other guys can pound sand. Oddly, that happens every four-to-eight years. Now that’s change I can believe in.

GOVERNANCE
• The White House website
Woo pee. The only 12 people hired last year with Stimulus money. Every government office has a better website this year than they did last year and the year before that. Evolution and learning and even user demands drive even government web designers. Here’s one of the best recources online, period: Library of Congress dot gov Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Ended the Bush practice of circumventing FDA rules
Sure. Now we have the Obamanation practice of circumventing LAWS. Now that’s change I can believe in.

NATIONAL SECURITY
• Announced Gitmo closure.
Cool. Oh wait. It’s still open isn’t it. Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Will house terrorists at a “super max” in the US
Cool. Oh wait. The’re all still at Gitmo, aren’t they? Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Cut the 1.4 billion missile defense program
Spent 1.4 trillion on pet Obama programs. Now that’s change I can believe in.

ECONOMY
• Authorized the US auto industry rescue plan
Washington-ese for “stole private companies from their owners and divided them among Obama cronies.” Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Housing rescue plan
Another great plan. Housing market stays in the toilet despite more foreclosures than ever. Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Authorized a $789 billion economic stimulus plan (2009)
Do you have a job? Does your neighbor? Now that’s change I can believe in.

TAXES
• Signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which provides small tax cuts for 95% of “working families,” 12 new jobs, and huge added debt for future tax payers.
The tax cuts were tiny and will be recovered just as soon as the earlier “Bush tax cuts” sunset. Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Convened an advisory board that is looking into simplifying the tax code
Is it simpler yet? Now that’s change I can believe in.

• Proposed doubling the child tax credit
Do you have twice as many kids yet? That’ll double your credit. Now that’s change I can believe in.





Parking Poaching

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I am pugnaciously pissed by parking pad pulverizers. They don’t have their pinkies on the pulse of passengers pressured and pushed to be pedestrians. In fact, their pundits want to punish by puncturing our pickups and sending them to perdition.

I think they’re just punks.

Poaching a Parking SpaceThe Burlington Free Press reports that cars claim about 24 acres in Burlington, Vermont’s, municipal lots and spaces based on the area of a typical 10-foot by 20-foot parking space.

Burlington celebrated global “PARK(ing) Day” last week. The five-year-old secular holiday aims steal back automobile parking spaces and reallocate them as something else.

My mom always said, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Science has shown that idiom to be factually wrong, at least for fruit flies; the tiny fruit fly likes sweet balsamic and apple cider vinegars better than honey, perhaps because the vinegar is easier to sip. Or because they like, well, fruit.

Anyway, Mom’s human relations rule proffers that we should not provoke the very people we want to persuade.

The PARK(ing) holiday began in 2005 when San Francisco art and design studio Rebar Group converted one nearby parking space into a mini park. They added a roll-in tree, a park bench, and laid sod atop the asphalt. Rebar maintained the “park” for just two hours. This year Burlington, Hangzhou, China, and Tehran held their first events.

It appears PARK(ing) organizers don’t care what we do with the “reclaimed” parking spaces as long as we don’t let cars use them.

One Burlington bright spot has occupied a “car-sized space” on Cherry Street for about a year. Outdoor Gear Exchange reduced the space for its truck loading zone, added a car parking space there, and installed a grand multi-bicycle “parking station” in front of their own store. It’s a bright spot because no one drives any farther to park and we have made room for additional green uses.

Want to persuade parkers? Pilfer a bit of pedestrian pathway next to the parking plot you want to point out and create your public park there. People will get the point. Particularly when they park right next to you.

Parkers have a sweet tooth (after all, there are never any empty spaces in front of Maple City Candies in St Albans), so my mom wasn’t wrong. Making me drive around burning gas to park somewhere else is more of a stick than a carrot cake and is unlikely to make me plug or praise your paradoxical-parking project.