Can I just start out by saying, I hate that Gods-damn Joe Lieberman piece of shit?
Ya know, the whole "entitlement" phrase regarding universal healthcare is a lazy catch all for the right. A poll tested, FAUX news talking point deliberately designed to invoke a gut reaction of, "Hey, he/she ain't pullin' their weight, unlike me!"
It's dishonest. It's typical of the Frank Luntzification of the Greed Oil Pollution party, which dumbs down our national discussions. Remember that cadillac driving welfare queen Ronald Raygun talked about? Never existed. Same with the f***ing death panels boolsheet.
Same thing again, and again, and again. . .
This healthcare discussion seems insane to me. "We should be responsible for our own healthcare choices!" screams the right, while accepting Medicare assistance.
Really? Mentally challenged individuals should be able to sort out the maze of PPO, PPP, supplemental, catastrophic, etc?
Shit! I can barely figure that stuff out, and who has the 100 hours necessary to get a basic cursory knowledge of our crappy overpriced health insurance industrial complex?
Or,"It was that 4 year-old child's parents fault they were not successful enough to have insurance when she got leukemia. They must have a character flaws! Or lazy!"
Let me expand on what I said in the comments a couple of posts below:
Are we entitled to police? firemen? Entitled to national defense? Entitled to credentialed doctors? How about good roads? Safe food supply? Safe drinking water? Safe (Hmmmm) drugs? All of these are supported by the taxpayers together for the betterment of each other.
At one time we were not "entitled" to free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion.
Let's ask the REAL question here . . .
How many people should die because of no healthcare a year? How many people every year should lose everything because of cancer? Give me a number that would be acceptable to you righties;
100?
10,000?
100,000?
A million?
Huh? Tell me righties, how many dead and/or financially devastated FELLOW AMERICANS are acceptable to you?
I hear all the time that this country was founded on the tenets of Christianity (It wasn't), well, how many people would Jesus approve for recission?
Did Jesus give a s**t about deficits or helping the poor and sick? Did he cheer on wars paid for by off the book funds or ask us to look out for each other?
I pity your non-humanity righties, and damn you to hell for your short sightedness. I guess I am going to have to accept that you will hate us "San Francisco liberals", and "Socialists" as we fight for affordable healthcare coverage so you don't lose it all.
F**k you very much.
-Prodigal Son
Friday, October 30, 2009
Defense of Entitlement
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Time To get All FDR and Sh*t!
PTS'ers. . .
The past 5 months, I have called the white house comment line every Monday morning with a simple, but polite message.
" My name is . . . and I live in . . . I am out of work. No savings to speak of. One accident or illness with my kids or spouse would destroy everything that is left.
I would like to ask the President to support medicare for all, and let us buy into an existing program OR a public option EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY with no 'trigger' or 'opt-out' malarky."
Now? A new message:
"I would like to say that I am a supporter and contributor to President Obama. My message is this: if no simple, AFFORDABLE, IMMEDAITE, public option is signed into law . . . NO money, NO time, NO vote from me for Obama in 2012."
I know it is drastic, but I am not f***ing around here. There are lives at stake, futures being destroyed everyday. And I f***ing mean it. No immediate affordable public option, and President Olympia Snowe can freeze her Maine ass off. . .
Won't you join me?
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
-Prodigal Son
Thursday, October 22, 2009
"Sick Around the World" Documentary Screening, 10/28/09
Free, and open to the public, a screening of the PBS FRONTLINE documentary Sick Around the World, sponsored by the West Texas A&M University (WTAMU) Democrats .
"In Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE teams up with veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid to find out how five other capitalist democracies - - the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland - - deliver health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures."
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Day, Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Location: WTAMU Campus, Jack B. Kelley (JBK) Student Center, Legends Club
Map: Building #2 - http://www.wtamu.edu/about/campus_map.aspx
For more information, please contact 806-584-1801.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Oh, OK . . . I'll just tell the bank
(Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.)
Or is it 2009? (25,000 Detroiters converged on Cobo Hall to get one of the 5,000 applications for federal aid to people in poverty.)
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Hear the good news? The recession is over! Everything's looking UP! Or so says, bazzillionaire Larry Summers, (now pulling down a taxpayer-funded six digit income.)
(Part of the daily lineup outside the State Employment Service Office. Memphis, Tennessee. June 1938. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.)
BE HAPPY! Your future job is just around the corn . . .uhh . . . next year or two. Don't worry! After all, employment is a lagging indicator, so I guess I can just tell my mortgage holder and credit cards that payment might be lagging . . .
Look at this unemployment chart from calculated risk blog: Look like improvement to you?
Look, you have a job. You worked hard to get to the spot you are in. You are not seeing anything about this stuff on the TeeVee. Yeah, it's bad out there but people should have planned better . . . LOOK! OVER THERE! Letterman was banging a staffer!
It's time for an adult conversation in this country about the economy. I know it is not uplifting, but we need to face up to the fact that millions of people are losing it all, and are sliding rapidly backwards from the middle class lifestyle they once had, and their spending losses made permanent. Fact is, if you have a job you are going to be OK. Those of us out in the rain? A long hard slog. A lost decade.
The kids getting out of school are getting decimated. NYTimes Bob Herbert.
"Only 65 of every 100 men aged 20 through 24 years old were working on any given day in the first six months of this year. In the age group 25 through 34 years old, traditionally a prime age range for getting married and starting a family, just 81 of 100 men were employed."
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Myself? Been EIGHT difficult months.
3 months salary in savings. a small severance. GONE. At age 41 I have had to borrow money from my 401k (about 10 years worth of saving and investing with huge penalties), and borrow money from my parents to survive, and I AM LUCKY. Unemployment insurance income represents 9% of what I was making. Do a little math in your head if you had to subsist on 9% of what you are making.
Been busy too. . .
Plan A: Get another gig like I had. Over 150 applications sent regardless of openings. Financial Firms STILL firing business development folks. Career path: GONE
Plan B: acquire existing tax business. SBA needed seller to self finance 30% for a loan. Seller threw up all sorts of requirements. Me and partner had to back away.
Plan C: Start a tax firm from scratch. Partner too reluctant, worried in this economy.
Plan D: Get anything with a paycheck, in or out of sector experience. 300+ applications sent, overqualified, not hiring, job freezes, posted job had internal fill (required to post, not a real opening) A few interviews. Mostly nothing.
Plan E: PLAN F**KING E? Seriously? Going back to school to get the credits I need to sit for the CPA exam. Been at it 1 month already. Old Dogs can learn new CRM systems. LOL
What about income? How long can the family survive on this austerity level? As long as we can. I don't have a date. My wife and I have stopped talking about the future. About kids' college. Kindermusik. Paying off the car early. Future vacations. That ladder rung where we were looks awfully far up . . .
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Last point. A friend in the industry I have known and respected for 10 years called me last week. We used to call him "Mr. Clean", and he was. He was the most ethical guy I know. He did so many hard luck cases, we used to tease him. He told me that he was let go 2 months ago, and asked what was out there. He sighed and broke down.
You see, his wife is disabled. A car wreck. He has three kids. He lives in upper state NY just outside Manhattan. He is going to lie on a mortgage app, get a HELOC on his house, pull all of his equity out and let the bank take it. Integrity be damned.
That was his best option. Parents are dead. He can't afford health care for his wife without an employer plan, Safety net? You kidding?
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So please congress. . . by all means . . . take your time on health reform. Take your time funding potential job creation. Just wait until the non-existent free market turns things around by itself, so you don't piss off your corporate owners.
After all . . . no one will see us on the TeeVee or Meet The Press . . .
-Prodigal Son