One reader of my last column suggested that I lived in a cloistered world, cut off from the real world of those who interact regularly with our troops fighting overseas. This reader wrote:
“But one thing I must say with no disrespect meant, you are so naive as to what is going on beyond rounds of golf and long walks. While you are merrily pecking away on your computer, enjoying the life of a retired teacher, driving from this state to that one, all the while recovering from your surgery that your medical insurance "allowed" you have (the 13th stint in your heart, which by the way...when I'm your age I am sure I will not be given the opportunity to have) there are others who are living front and center with our men and women in uniform.”
That hurt. However, it is generally true. I am retired and I enjoy spending my winters in central Florida where, as time and health permit, I play golf and go for long walks. I may even be naïve, but not for the reason the writer gave. (Why the writer will be denied coronary stents in the future escapes me.)
All of us live in a cloistered world when you think about it. My critic lives in a world that involves regular travel with military personnel going to or returning from Afghanistan, Iraq or other overseas assignments. These personnel necessarily have a perspective on world and national events that the rest of us, thankfully, because of their service, do not have.
Consider, however, that teachers in the classroom have a perspective on school matters that most lay people lack. “Inside the beltway” has long been used (often in a derogatory sense) to describe the mindset of those who associate daily with the rhythm and procedures of Washington politics. Coal miners in Kentucky have a different view of labor unions and mine safety than mine owners or management. Religious people who regularly attend church have a different perspective on church matters than those who count themselves as Christians, say, but who attend church irregularly, it at all. Our very nature is to build a fellowship of friends among those with whom we agree. Whether the church, fraternal club, or political party, we tend to associate with those who share our values or interests. Hence, we tend to lead cloistered lives, generally shut off from dissenting views or broader vistas.
The success of alternative radio and television is a testament to the fact that birds of a feather want to flock together. We want to hear – and do hear – what we already believe. Few are the people who seek out and consider the views or opinions of those with whom they disagree. I know of one man who listens only to Fox News and has a headset radio so he can listen three hours each weekday to Rush Limbaugh while he works in the yard or in his garage workshop. I am not suggesting that is wrong. But you surely agree that this man lives in a very cloistered world and must necessarily have a very biased, if not naïve, view of national events and their possible consequences.
I would not say, however, that he is any different from the majority of us who only listen to one radio or TV network for our news, who believe every e-mail or Internet posting forwarded to us, or who regularly read only the blogs of those with whom we agree. It is human nature.
I feel compelled to address the accusation that my retired life leaves me naïve about the real world. It is true that I have little contact with young troops serving our country on foreign soil. Nevertheless, my winter retirement community is heavily loaded with people who Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation.” These men and women (me included) served their county during World War II, or the Korean War, or the Vietnam War, or Desert Storm. They share different faiths and different political views, but one should never question their support for the president, the flag or our troops.
I would not call them naïve. They may not approve of the current congress. They may not have voted for President Obama. They may not like everything coming out of Washington these days. Nevertheless, they have been around long enough to know that the nation will endure and prosper beyond these tough times. They read widely and discuss matters vigorously. But naive? Hardly.
They have seen politicians go on Communist witch-hunts, they have seen presidents lie, and they have seen politicians of both parties cheat. They have seen “big f---ing deals” that were supposed to save the country and other "deals" that people warned would destroy the country. They can disagree and they can argue, but they do not have to say, “No disrespect intended,” for they respect each other. They know what the other person has been through.
They know also that all information is biased; especially that information obtained from commercial news media, the Internet or blog writers, and those who's very career depends on generating ratings. They know from experience that they must look at and consider other points of view – and then consider the source. They will remain loyal to their political affiliation. And, yes, they will remain faithful to their religious views and social values. But naïve? They have too much experience spanning decades to be taken in by the “sky is falling” crowd.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
KAMIKAZI POLITICS MAKES IT OKAY TO UNDERMINE OUR TROOPS?
REPEALICANS
The GOP's risky plan to run against health care reform.
By William Saletan
Posted Monday, March 22, 2010, at 8:26 AM ET
Below is an excerpt from the above titled article. You can read Saletan's entire article at http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2248513.
"In his speech to House Democrats on Saturday, President Obama listed some of the bill's most popular elements: tax credits to small business to provide insurance, a ban on insurance exclusion for pre-existing conditions, a ban on lifetime coverage caps, and letting twentysomethings stay on their parents' policies. Obama argued that these provisions make the bill easier to defend. But his political advisers are hinting at a more aggressive strategy: portraying Republicans who oppose the legislation as opposing all of its benefits.
In the Bush administration, this was standard practice. Any Democrat who resisted any component of a bill was accused of opposing the bill's objective. If you complained about labor provisions of the bill to establish a federal department of homeland security, Republicans said you were against homeland security. If you objected to part of the "Patriot Act," they said you were unpatriotic. If you criticized Bush's execution of the Iraq war, they said you were undermining our troops."
I was taken aback by the comment at the end of the first quoted paragraph to the effect that some of Obama's political advisers want to aggressively portray "Republicans who oppose the [health care reform] legislation as opposing all of its benefits." This is wrong, I thought, and then I read the next paragraph and realized why I was taken aback. We've seen this strategy before -- and I didn't like it then.
Everything in that second paragraph is true and only those with short or selective memories have forgotten.
Yet, just last week a Facebook friend made the statement, "Obama is more of a threat to America than the terrorists." Wow, talk about undermining the troops. Declaring the Commander in Chief of our troops fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan as being more of a threat to American than the terrorists they are fighting would normally be consider treason. It is certainly irresponsible.
Fanaticism apparently knows no bounds and carries no shame.
I do not fear for the country under President Obama or any other president. I fear for the country when political or religious fanatics can make such statements and instead of fearing a knock on their door from the FBI, they receive praise from some quarters. Desperate military leaders in Japan near the close of the war capitalized on the medieval religious fanaticism of the times to send Kamikaze pilots to certain death in the futile attempt to forestall certain defeat. Are we (some of us, at least) feeling so desperate that we must resort to Kamikaze style politics?
Are we approaching the point in our country where divisive politics, heated, overcharged and often unfounded words and hate symbols can be used to provoke the radical fanatics among us to commit Kamikaze style acts in the mistaken belief that they are acting for the good of the country. If so, we face a greater enemy within than from any terrorists abroad.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
HEALTH CARE REFORM
Many people won't see the article below either because they don't bother to check facts, because they find the facts discouraging, or because they find the facts contrary to what they choose to believe. I am including the article from Fact Check here as a public service. Take from it what you will.
Most of us do not like to be confronted with the facts when we have already made up our minds. Just the same, for a piece of legislation as important as the health care reform legislation, shouldn't we all be acting on facts rather than fear?
You can read the article in its original form at: http://www.factcheck.org/2010/03/a-final-weekend-of-whoppers/
FactCheck.orgHome
A Final Weekend of Whoppers?
Health care legislation could be heading toward the final showdown. We look at the biggest falsehoods of the recent debate.
March 19, 2010
Summary
With the House preparing for a final vote on the Senate health care legislation, with revisions, Sunday afternoon, we thought we’d give our readers a wrap-up of the top falsehoods of late. The debate over this bill has stretched on almost as long as a presidential campaign, and we suspect this weekend will be filled with politicians and third-party groups making their final — and faulty — pitches. There’s little doubt they’ll repeat wrong and misleading statements about premium costs, a government takeover, keeping your plan, Medicare cuts and more. Keep reading for details.
Analysis
This may — or may not — be our last roundup of health care whoppers. We posted an earlier collection in August, and bogus health care claims led our list of the top whoppers of 2009.
Americans’ premiums will go up. Americans’ premiums will go down.
The battle over what happens to insurance premium costs under the bill was most pronounced during President Obama’s health care summit Feb. 25. Obama and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee argued over whether premiums would increase (Alexander’s view) or decrease (Obama’s), compared with what premiums would do in the absence of legislation. The truth is that for most people, premiums wouldn’t change significantly.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that for those in the group market — those who get insurance through their employers — premiums would largely stay the same. The change in the average premium in the large group market would be between 0 percent and a 3 percent decrease, for instance, compared with where they’d be under current law in 2016. The average premiums for those who buy insurance on their own would go up, however, by 10 percent to 13 percent. The reason is that benefits would become a lot better for this market under the bill. Also, most people buying their own coverage would receive subsidies that make their net costs for these plans substantially lower than they otherwise would be.
It’s government-run health care.
Despite the fact that the federal health insurance plan (a.k.a. the “public option”) is now gone from the bill, Republicans and conservative groups have continued to claim that the bill institutes a system like the one in the United Kingdom, or Canada, or otherwise amounts to a government takeover. It doesn’t. A pure government-run system was never among the leading Democratic proposals, much to the chagrin of single-payer advocates. Instead, the bill builds on our current system of private insurance, and in fact, drums up more business for private companies by mandating that individuals buy coverage and giving many subsidies to do so. There would be increased government regulation of the insurance industry, however, to require companies to cover preexisting conditions, for example. These “government-run” claims have also included heavy criticism of health care in the U.K., such as the outrageous assertion by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop that seniors would be “too old” to qualify for artificial joints and pacemakers in the U.K. The majority of those getting joint replacements and pacemakers in the U.K. are, not surprisingly, seniors.
If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.
Obama has repeatedly made this claim, and it’s true for the most part. But not for everyone. Employers could still drop coverage under the bill — just as they can now — and, in fact, the CBO estimates that some would. Under the Senate bill, the CBO said that 8 million to 9 million people who would be expected to have employer-sponsored insurance under current law wouldn’t be offered such benefits by 2019. These would mainly be low-income workers, CBO said, who would be eligible for subsidies to buy their own plans. Others would gain coverage through their jobs under the bill, resulting in a net decrease of 4 million people on employer-sponsored insurance. That figure holds for the final legislation.
The bill cuts Medicare by $500 billion.
Whether these are "cuts" or much-needed "savings" depends on the political expedience of the moment, it seems. When Republican Sen. John McCain, then a presidential candidate, proposed similar reductions to pay for his health care plan, it was the Obama camp that attacked the Republican for cutting benefits. Whatever you want to call them, it’s a $500 billion reduction in the growth of future spending over 10 years, not a slashing of the current Medicare budget or benefits. It’s true that those who get their coverage through Medicare Advantage’s private plans (about 22 percent of Medicare enrollees) would see fewer add-on benefits; the bill aims to reduce the heftier payments made by the government to Medicare Advantage plans, compared with regular fee-for-service Medicare. The Democrats’ bill also boosts certain benefits: It makes preventive care free and closes the "doughnut hole," a current gap in prescription drug coverage for seniors.
The health care plan would be the largest middle-class tax cut for health care.
Note the “for health care" part of this claim that has been made by President Obama and other Democrats. This may be true, given the qualifier. But we’re not sure who would even maintain a list of the biggest “middle-class” tax cuts, since there is no agreed upon definition of who’s “middle class.” (The vast majority of Americans say they’re "middle-class," making this a popular buzzword for politicians.) This grandiose-sounding assertion, however, is only being made about tax cuts for health care. The bill includes about $460 billion over 10 years in subsidy money. Incidentally, President Bush’s 2001 tax cut totaled about $1.3 trillion over 10 years, with about 42 percent of the benefits going to the middle 60 percent of all income earners, according to a breakdown by the Tax Policy Center. That amounts to $566 billion over 10 years, a bigger cut for the middle earners than the health care tax cut.
Medical malpractice is the biggest driver of health care spending.
Economic studies simply do not support this claim. Many Republicans strongly back limiting liability awards in medical malpractice cases, and it’s true that doing so would save money. The CBO said measures that conservatives have proposed would save $54 billion over 10 years and "reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009)."
That’s real money, but it’s a tiny part of the more than $2 trillion spent on health care annually in the U.S. There’s disagreement over what exactly the biggest drivers of spending are, but medical malpractice doesn’t top the list. About 75 percent of spending, for instance, goes to taking care of chronic disease.
Cadillac plans and a sweetheart deal for unions
The controversy over those cushy Cadillac insurance plans just keeps on running. Here are the details: The bill places a tax on high-cost employer-sponsored plans – specifically there’s a 40 percent tax on the value of plans above $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families, starting in 2018. The tax falls on insurers, but would be passed along to policyholders one way or another. First, the thresholds were increased after union leaders lobbied for them, which led Republican leaders to charge that the new tax was a sweetheart deal for labor — and they were increased again for the final bill. But the tax would affect mainly nonunion workers, according to an analysis partly authored by a former Bush adviser. Under even lower thresholds than the bill has now, union workers would have made up only 17 percent of those affected by the tax in 2019, the analysis said.
Of course, liberal groups and union leaders have made misleading claims about this Cadillac tax, saying it would really hit middle-class workers – lots of them. But economists in general back this idea, and the thinking behind it isn’t to raise money by slamming workers with a 40 percent tax. On the contrary, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office believe the tax will boost paychecks. They say the existence of the tax will prompt employers and employees to choose less expensive health plans. In lieu of the higher cost benefits, employers will raise salaries. And that’s how the government really makes its revenue here: on payroll and income taxes on those higher paychecks.
– by Lori Robertson
Posted by Lori Robertson on Friday, March 19, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Most of us do not like to be confronted with the facts when we have already made up our minds. Just the same, for a piece of legislation as important as the health care reform legislation, shouldn't we all be acting on facts rather than fear?
You can read the article in its original form at: http://www.factcheck.org/2010/03/a-final-weekend-of-whoppers/
FactCheck.orgHome
A Final Weekend of Whoppers?
Health care legislation could be heading toward the final showdown. We look at the biggest falsehoods of the recent debate.
March 19, 2010
Summary
With the House preparing for a final vote on the Senate health care legislation, with revisions, Sunday afternoon, we thought we’d give our readers a wrap-up of the top falsehoods of late. The debate over this bill has stretched on almost as long as a presidential campaign, and we suspect this weekend will be filled with politicians and third-party groups making their final — and faulty — pitches. There’s little doubt they’ll repeat wrong and misleading statements about premium costs, a government takeover, keeping your plan, Medicare cuts and more. Keep reading for details.
Analysis
This may — or may not — be our last roundup of health care whoppers. We posted an earlier collection in August, and bogus health care claims led our list of the top whoppers of 2009.
Americans’ premiums will go up. Americans’ premiums will go down.
The battle over what happens to insurance premium costs under the bill was most pronounced during President Obama’s health care summit Feb. 25. Obama and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee argued over whether premiums would increase (Alexander’s view) or decrease (Obama’s), compared with what premiums would do in the absence of legislation. The truth is that for most people, premiums wouldn’t change significantly.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that for those in the group market — those who get insurance through their employers — premiums would largely stay the same. The change in the average premium in the large group market would be between 0 percent and a 3 percent decrease, for instance, compared with where they’d be under current law in 2016. The average premiums for those who buy insurance on their own would go up, however, by 10 percent to 13 percent. The reason is that benefits would become a lot better for this market under the bill. Also, most people buying their own coverage would receive subsidies that make their net costs for these plans substantially lower than they otherwise would be.
It’s government-run health care.
Despite the fact that the federal health insurance plan (a.k.a. the “public option”) is now gone from the bill, Republicans and conservative groups have continued to claim that the bill institutes a system like the one in the United Kingdom, or Canada, or otherwise amounts to a government takeover. It doesn’t. A pure government-run system was never among the leading Democratic proposals, much to the chagrin of single-payer advocates. Instead, the bill builds on our current system of private insurance, and in fact, drums up more business for private companies by mandating that individuals buy coverage and giving many subsidies to do so. There would be increased government regulation of the insurance industry, however, to require companies to cover preexisting conditions, for example. These “government-run” claims have also included heavy criticism of health care in the U.K., such as the outrageous assertion by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop that seniors would be “too old” to qualify for artificial joints and pacemakers in the U.K. The majority of those getting joint replacements and pacemakers in the U.K. are, not surprisingly, seniors.
If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.
Obama has repeatedly made this claim, and it’s true for the most part. But not for everyone. Employers could still drop coverage under the bill — just as they can now — and, in fact, the CBO estimates that some would. Under the Senate bill, the CBO said that 8 million to 9 million people who would be expected to have employer-sponsored insurance under current law wouldn’t be offered such benefits by 2019. These would mainly be low-income workers, CBO said, who would be eligible for subsidies to buy their own plans. Others would gain coverage through their jobs under the bill, resulting in a net decrease of 4 million people on employer-sponsored insurance. That figure holds for the final legislation.
The bill cuts Medicare by $500 billion.
Whether these are "cuts" or much-needed "savings" depends on the political expedience of the moment, it seems. When Republican Sen. John McCain, then a presidential candidate, proposed similar reductions to pay for his health care plan, it was the Obama camp that attacked the Republican for cutting benefits. Whatever you want to call them, it’s a $500 billion reduction in the growth of future spending over 10 years, not a slashing of the current Medicare budget or benefits. It’s true that those who get their coverage through Medicare Advantage’s private plans (about 22 percent of Medicare enrollees) would see fewer add-on benefits; the bill aims to reduce the heftier payments made by the government to Medicare Advantage plans, compared with regular fee-for-service Medicare. The Democrats’ bill also boosts certain benefits: It makes preventive care free and closes the "doughnut hole," a current gap in prescription drug coverage for seniors.
The health care plan would be the largest middle-class tax cut for health care.
Note the “for health care" part of this claim that has been made by President Obama and other Democrats. This may be true, given the qualifier. But we’re not sure who would even maintain a list of the biggest “middle-class” tax cuts, since there is no agreed upon definition of who’s “middle class.” (The vast majority of Americans say they’re "middle-class," making this a popular buzzword for politicians.) This grandiose-sounding assertion, however, is only being made about tax cuts for health care. The bill includes about $460 billion over 10 years in subsidy money. Incidentally, President Bush’s 2001 tax cut totaled about $1.3 trillion over 10 years, with about 42 percent of the benefits going to the middle 60 percent of all income earners, according to a breakdown by the Tax Policy Center. That amounts to $566 billion over 10 years, a bigger cut for the middle earners than the health care tax cut.
Medical malpractice is the biggest driver of health care spending.
Economic studies simply do not support this claim. Many Republicans strongly back limiting liability awards in medical malpractice cases, and it’s true that doing so would save money. The CBO said measures that conservatives have proposed would save $54 billion over 10 years and "reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009)."
That’s real money, but it’s a tiny part of the more than $2 trillion spent on health care annually in the U.S. There’s disagreement over what exactly the biggest drivers of spending are, but medical malpractice doesn’t top the list. About 75 percent of spending, for instance, goes to taking care of chronic disease.
Cadillac plans and a sweetheart deal for unions
The controversy over those cushy Cadillac insurance plans just keeps on running. Here are the details: The bill places a tax on high-cost employer-sponsored plans – specifically there’s a 40 percent tax on the value of plans above $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families, starting in 2018. The tax falls on insurers, but would be passed along to policyholders one way or another. First, the thresholds were increased after union leaders lobbied for them, which led Republican leaders to charge that the new tax was a sweetheart deal for labor — and they were increased again for the final bill. But the tax would affect mainly nonunion workers, according to an analysis partly authored by a former Bush adviser. Under even lower thresholds than the bill has now, union workers would have made up only 17 percent of those affected by the tax in 2019, the analysis said.
Of course, liberal groups and union leaders have made misleading claims about this Cadillac tax, saying it would really hit middle-class workers – lots of them. But economists in general back this idea, and the thinking behind it isn’t to raise money by slamming workers with a 40 percent tax. On the contrary, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office believe the tax will boost paychecks. They say the existence of the tax will prompt employers and employees to choose less expensive health plans. In lieu of the higher cost benefits, employers will raise salaries. And that’s how the government really makes its revenue here: on payroll and income taxes on those higher paychecks.
– by Lori Robertson
Posted by Lori Robertson on Friday, March 19, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Friday, March 5, 2010
RANDOM THOUGHTS
This is my “sound off” blog, a time when I sound off about some of the things I see or hear that bug me. You have the right to respond and tell me what bugs you. In fact, I welcome your comments.
Grammar and Spelling: When did it become all right to ignore the rules of grammar and to dismiss spelling as too much trouble? E-mail is just one exasperating example. I’ve read so many e-mails that require me to decipher what the writer meant that I just want to scream. If it’s too much trouble for you to say what you mean, why should I take the trouble to translate what you mean?
For god’s sake, use capitalization, where appropriate, and a sprinkle of punctuation marks here and there. It’s not that much trouble, especially if you use Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works or some other word processor program. All such programs have grammar and spelling checkers. USE THEM!
If you are so ignorant that you cannot make since of spelling or grammar rules, then you should definitely use these programs. If you want to send a short e-mail or post a note in Face Book and want to hide your lack of skill with the rules of punctuation and spelling, you can still use the word processor program to compose your note, and after checking it for grammar and spelling you can copy and paste it into your e-mail. That’s how I write my blog. I compose it first in MS Word, run the spell and grammar checker and then re-read it to make sure it makes scents.
(Did you catch the glaring misuse of proper words above? If not, you can stop reading here for I have nothing to say that you will understand.)¬
Most e-mail programs come with a built-in spell checker. Find it and use it. If yours does not, download a free spell checker at www.iespell.com. Grammar checkers are available but the ones you find in word processor programs are better.
Now, I appreciate that brevity is the rule when texting or instant messaging. And I’m OK with that. Call it shorthand, if you want. BTW (by the way), we all use it not only in texting and instant messaging but in our daily conversations. When the boss says he wants something ASAP, we know what he means. When Sarah Palin uses the phrase “you betcha,” we know what she means. I am pretty sure you knew what I meant when I wrote MS Word in the previous paragraph. Besides, the tiny keyboards we use to compose text messages on our phones encourage brevity. BTW, those tiny keyboard on phones are exactly the reason no sane person should be texting while driving.
Forwarded E-mail: I enjoy receiving jokes, funny pictures, awesome pictures, interesting comments made by others and other forms of forwarded e-mail. Well, to be precise, I enjoy most of the forwarded e-mail I receive. Some of it though is tedious because the sender has not learned how to highlight and delete all the names and addresses of the several hundred people it went to before he or she received it. These Internet illiterates just hit the Forward button and start typing in addresses. You and I get the mind-numbing task of wading through this garbage to find the supposed jewel the sender meant for us.
To be honest, I frequently just delete the entire message – especially from people I know from past experience are too lazy or too dumb remove the aforementioned garbage. If the joke is any good, I am sure I will receive several other copies. Other forwarded junk from these people is probably not all that interesting anyway. How clever can something be from a person not intelligent enough to learn how to delete names and addresses of previous readers?
The U.S. Post Office: The U.S. Post Office lost something like $3 billion dollars in the last quarter of last year. (I may have the wrong amount but it was a big number.) The last quarter of the year is when the post office traditionally made money because of the holiday mailings. Their proposed solution to the problem of declining revenue is to eliminate Saturday deliveries (which, actually is all right with me) and to raise postal rates.
When people are not using or buying your product the way to get them back is to diminish your services and increase your rates. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Right. Try that in any other business and you will be out of business.
Actually, the post office is between a rock and a hard spot. More and more people, me included, have switched from using the U.S. mail to using the Internet. My banking is done online. My statements are all sent to be via the Internet. These steps were taken after going through several seasons when my forwarded mail either wasn’t forwarded or was lost in the process somewhere. You get smart in a hurry after having to pay a late fee on a credit card a bill that arrived after the due date.
In short, I can no longer rely on the U.S. Postal Service. Forget the stuff about rain, snow and gloom of night. They can’t get more than half my mail forwarded properly. I’ve received none of my magazines this winter, magazines that carry first class postage and were forwarded in the past. Two packages that should have been forwarded, one containing medication, were never received. I don’t know where they are – and neither does the post office.
I don’t have a solution to propose. The U.S. Postal Service is a government agency and I am sure has to operate under a multitude of rules and regulations – much like schools – and so is not free to make changes that might make business sense. Just the same, it is losing ground to UPS, FedEx and the Internet and cannot survive much longer under its present way of operating.
The Sanctity of Marriage: Can we get real about the gay marriage thing? You can be opposed to gay marriage for a variety of reasons: because it disgusts you, because it goes against something you read in the Bible, because Pat Robertson has threatened to have God smite you, or for whatever other reason you may have. But, please, don’t tell me you are against gay marriage because you want to preserve the sanctity of marriage.
What sanctity? Fifty percent of people who enter into marriage end up divorced, often before dad finishes paying for the wedding. Probably more than 50% of married people have lived together, had sex and, in some cases, had children before they were married. Wives and husbands regularly cheat on each other. Spousal abuse is rampant in the country. Abused and abandoned children by married parents are a national disgrace.
Just what part of the marriages we have is it that you want to preserve?
Booting Everyone Out of Congress: Can we get real about the jerks in Congress? We elected them! We elected each of them, except for the few that have been appointed to fill out the term of someone who died or was forced to resign. We can change that – but not overnight. Even if we booted everyone out of Congress, WE would vote most of them back into office. They may be scoundrels but they are smart scoundrels and know how to push our buttons, promise us what we want to hear and spin every event to make themselves look good while tarring their opponent. And we fall for it – every time.
We do not want honest politicians. We want politicians who will bring home to their constituents some of the money in Washington. We want businesses brought to our state. We want laws that are favorable to our concerns, our locale, our security and our welfare. That isn’t going to change by starting over with a new bunch of candidates, so let’s stop circulating those stupid e-mails demanding that everyone in Congress be turned out and we elect a new batch.
If we are no smarter than to think that way, we are not going to be smart enough to elect a better batch of politicians to represent us. We need to start using the Internet and other means at our disposal to influence the people we have elected. Remember, the first concern of every politician is to get re-elected. Our individually voiced concerns will not be ignored if our representative fears for his or her job.
Grammar and Spelling: When did it become all right to ignore the rules of grammar and to dismiss spelling as too much trouble? E-mail is just one exasperating example. I’ve read so many e-mails that require me to decipher what the writer meant that I just want to scream. If it’s too much trouble for you to say what you mean, why should I take the trouble to translate what you mean?
For god’s sake, use capitalization, where appropriate, and a sprinkle of punctuation marks here and there. It’s not that much trouble, especially if you use Microsoft Word, Microsoft Works or some other word processor program. All such programs have grammar and spelling checkers. USE THEM!
If you are so ignorant that you cannot make since of spelling or grammar rules, then you should definitely use these programs. If you want to send a short e-mail or post a note in Face Book and want to hide your lack of skill with the rules of punctuation and spelling, you can still use the word processor program to compose your note, and after checking it for grammar and spelling you can copy and paste it into your e-mail. That’s how I write my blog. I compose it first in MS Word, run the spell and grammar checker and then re-read it to make sure it makes scents.
(Did you catch the glaring misuse of proper words above? If not, you can stop reading here for I have nothing to say that you will understand.)¬
Most e-mail programs come with a built-in spell checker. Find it and use it. If yours does not, download a free spell checker at www.iespell.com. Grammar checkers are available but the ones you find in word processor programs are better.
Now, I appreciate that brevity is the rule when texting or instant messaging. And I’m OK with that. Call it shorthand, if you want. BTW (by the way), we all use it not only in texting and instant messaging but in our daily conversations. When the boss says he wants something ASAP, we know what he means. When Sarah Palin uses the phrase “you betcha,” we know what she means. I am pretty sure you knew what I meant when I wrote MS Word in the previous paragraph. Besides, the tiny keyboards we use to compose text messages on our phones encourage brevity. BTW, those tiny keyboard on phones are exactly the reason no sane person should be texting while driving.
Forwarded E-mail: I enjoy receiving jokes, funny pictures, awesome pictures, interesting comments made by others and other forms of forwarded e-mail. Well, to be precise, I enjoy most of the forwarded e-mail I receive. Some of it though is tedious because the sender has not learned how to highlight and delete all the names and addresses of the several hundred people it went to before he or she received it. These Internet illiterates just hit the Forward button and start typing in addresses. You and I get the mind-numbing task of wading through this garbage to find the supposed jewel the sender meant for us.
To be honest, I frequently just delete the entire message – especially from people I know from past experience are too lazy or too dumb remove the aforementioned garbage. If the joke is any good, I am sure I will receive several other copies. Other forwarded junk from these people is probably not all that interesting anyway. How clever can something be from a person not intelligent enough to learn how to delete names and addresses of previous readers?
The U.S. Post Office: The U.S. Post Office lost something like $3 billion dollars in the last quarter of last year. (I may have the wrong amount but it was a big number.) The last quarter of the year is when the post office traditionally made money because of the holiday mailings. Their proposed solution to the problem of declining revenue is to eliminate Saturday deliveries (which, actually is all right with me) and to raise postal rates.
When people are not using or buying your product the way to get them back is to diminish your services and increase your rates. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Right. Try that in any other business and you will be out of business.
Actually, the post office is between a rock and a hard spot. More and more people, me included, have switched from using the U.S. mail to using the Internet. My banking is done online. My statements are all sent to be via the Internet. These steps were taken after going through several seasons when my forwarded mail either wasn’t forwarded or was lost in the process somewhere. You get smart in a hurry after having to pay a late fee on a credit card a bill that arrived after the due date.
In short, I can no longer rely on the U.S. Postal Service. Forget the stuff about rain, snow and gloom of night. They can’t get more than half my mail forwarded properly. I’ve received none of my magazines this winter, magazines that carry first class postage and were forwarded in the past. Two packages that should have been forwarded, one containing medication, were never received. I don’t know where they are – and neither does the post office.
I don’t have a solution to propose. The U.S. Postal Service is a government agency and I am sure has to operate under a multitude of rules and regulations – much like schools – and so is not free to make changes that might make business sense. Just the same, it is losing ground to UPS, FedEx and the Internet and cannot survive much longer under its present way of operating.
The Sanctity of Marriage: Can we get real about the gay marriage thing? You can be opposed to gay marriage for a variety of reasons: because it disgusts you, because it goes against something you read in the Bible, because Pat Robertson has threatened to have God smite you, or for whatever other reason you may have. But, please, don’t tell me you are against gay marriage because you want to preserve the sanctity of marriage.
What sanctity? Fifty percent of people who enter into marriage end up divorced, often before dad finishes paying for the wedding. Probably more than 50% of married people have lived together, had sex and, in some cases, had children before they were married. Wives and husbands regularly cheat on each other. Spousal abuse is rampant in the country. Abused and abandoned children by married parents are a national disgrace.
Just what part of the marriages we have is it that you want to preserve?
Booting Everyone Out of Congress: Can we get real about the jerks in Congress? We elected them! We elected each of them, except for the few that have been appointed to fill out the term of someone who died or was forced to resign. We can change that – but not overnight. Even if we booted everyone out of Congress, WE would vote most of them back into office. They may be scoundrels but they are smart scoundrels and know how to push our buttons, promise us what we want to hear and spin every event to make themselves look good while tarring their opponent. And we fall for it – every time.
We do not want honest politicians. We want politicians who will bring home to their constituents some of the money in Washington. We want businesses brought to our state. We want laws that are favorable to our concerns, our locale, our security and our welfare. That isn’t going to change by starting over with a new bunch of candidates, so let’s stop circulating those stupid e-mails demanding that everyone in Congress be turned out and we elect a new batch.
If we are no smarter than to think that way, we are not going to be smart enough to elect a better batch of politicians to represent us. We need to start using the Internet and other means at our disposal to influence the people we have elected. Remember, the first concern of every politician is to get re-elected. Our individually voiced concerns will not be ignored if our representative fears for his or her job.
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