Healthcare Reform

  Healthcare is the topic of a lot of Washington politicians these days, so that fact alone should be grounds enough for qualifying as a moochenym. This is a meaningless gesture of goodwill by those who claim to offer a solution to the perceived problems of healthcare.

Before you can fix something you need to know how it is suppose to work, otherwise, the best you can do is say you think it is fixed.

There is an untold amount of views on what the healthcare system should be and those views are very dynamic. In other words, healthcare is like a form of religion you worship based on your needs.

We are a nation of needs and the politicians are quick to seize whatever opportunities there are to cater to those needs even when there are no viable solutions.

Reform means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The healthcare system has been called wrong and corrupt and it doesn't satisfy everybody. However, none of these deficiencies are tangible enough to actually fix.

You can find wrong in everything, so why single out healthcare? Corruption is capitalism's kid brother, so why single out healthcare? Who has the authority to say what is satisfactory, so why single out healthcare?

Politicians see Healthcare as a fat juicy target with a bullseye on its back oozing all kind of political capital. Politicians live for the opportunity to say they are going to make your miserable life better.

At some point in your life you will have to participate in a healthcare service. Remember, the healthcare system is to be likened to a religion. Like any service there is going to be a varying degree of comfort amongst the parishioners. Americans go to great lengths to avoid being uncomfortable; which feeds directly into the hands of politicians.

What makes healthcare so enticing to politicians is the fact that this is a cow that can never run dry.

They know a large segment of society views the healthcare system as a place to go for cleansing and redemption when their illicit behavior catches up with them.

They know there is a depentant class that heavily rely on the system.

They know that there is inherent risk in just living in this culture that can land you in the system.

Here is an issue we all have a stake in and since it pertains to our health it ranks high on the list of must haves. Politicians understand this and are acting accordingly.

They preach a brighter day is coming for the system in which we will all be blessed beyond any level of mortal gratitude. While in their minds they are betting that such a day will be preceeded by the arrival of doomsday.

  The healthcare system can be tampered with in ways that look like change. However, change is not to be confused with reform.

Capitalism will always be a defender of healthcare because capitalism knows that the gross national product (GNP) is what makes the flag wave and the healthcare GNP harvest is lucrative. In other words, there is a lot of wealth being generated through healthcare.

Wealth has a way of taming the most maverick of politicians. As a result policy is often written under the auspicies of those who have a stake in a growth industry like the healthcare sector. This gaurantees corruption in healthcare is here to stay.

The reality of Healthcare reform is that it is a code word for saying the system can be controlled, and depending on who you are talking to will determine the definition of control. Anything that is considered vital to life makes a good starting place for shaping a society. We are beyond the day of letting society travel on its on evolutionary course because that can prove dangerous to your culture.

Politicians are in the thick of all this and they are stirring the pot from all angles. Their game plan is to use the healthcare issue to entice those who are prone to enticing, raise the idea of reform to those who see the healthcare industry as a possible solution to bigger problem, and above all else, reap as much political hay from this issue as possible so that it carrys over to several generations of politicians giving them and issue to take cover behind when convenient.

Healthcare reform is nothing more than a political game being played for the benefit of the players only, so bystanders beware.

Representative Government

  The term 'representative government' has taken on the meaningless goodwill gesture definition. The once proud government 'of the people, by the people, for the people', that was suppose to show the world the way, has lost its luster.

The government today is only a shell of what it was intended to be. The assumption was 'of the people, by the people, for the people' meant common people could run for office, get elected by common people and go off to Washington and work for those same common people who elected them.

Time has caught up with the government model set forth by the founding fathers. The founding fathers were mortal, so they are not to be blamed.

Fear is the number one killer of governments; always has been, always will be. Fear causes governments to become irrational; which leads to a greater degree of immorality by those in power.

Immoral governments have an incessant fixation with the idea of strengthening its hold on its interests even when the level of danger surrounding those interests hasn't increased. Perceiving treats that don't exist is a clear example of fleeing when no one is chasing you.

One of the roles of government is to be the sentinel for the nation and sound the warning when there is danger. The ability to distinguish what poses a real threat to the nation verses a threat to an interest of the nation is beyond the scope of government. Special interest has made it impossible to separate the two.

Rather than face the intricacies of an issue, government has the luxury of falling back on its role as sentinel and sounding the national alarm which imply national danger even when there is very little threat at hand.

National danger has a way of bringing out both the best and worst in a nation. Now you have the driving forces behind self-preservation cuddled with the zeal of nationalism creating a environment ripe for dictatorship.

Instead of governing according to the will of the people you get a conceited authoritarian-like government dealing in incoherent policy making.

September 11, 2001 drove a stake through the heart of the 'of the people, by the people, for the people' style government. That style of government has been deprecated and is something that is exported to poor countries. The 911 tragedy officially brought about a new version of government.

Unit testing of several beta versions of this new government has been taking place for decades. After 911 the government chose to run the full-blown release in what can best be described as system-testing in production due to expediency.

This new government release is based on stealth tactics and hails its out of the box level of scalability as being geared towards meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century that the founding fathers couldn't possibly have envisioned.

Upgrading to a new system usually mean the bugs that were in the old system have now been fixed. In fact, you usually get a list boasting of all the fixes. Not this time; since this new government upgrade is built on stealth tactics, the list is a secret, so you are on your own when it comes to figuring out what has changed.

The major changes are to the area of the 'for the people' section of the old version of government.

  The part about 'for the people' is what the average voter take stock in. Unfortunately, both the old and new system is predicated on this fact, politicians have to make promises in order to get elected. They have to say something that resonate with voters.

The old system of government allowed politicians the opportunity to take care of business for the people. They got elected by the people based on something they said and if you couldn't get it done for the people who elected you, that meant you were a failure to the people.

This new version of government removes the responsibility of pleasing 'the people' from the individual politicians. This was done to weed out disparate legislation that didn't offer any meaningful purpose as far as the overall big picture is concerned. Now government is truly functioning as an enterprise that is nimble and capable of quick response.

Government officials now get to set the priority of issues rather than the voters. Voters may elect candidates that campaign on a particular issue but when candidates get to Washington, their priorities are handed to them.

The rationale behind all this is that government must be preserved and that should best be managed by government itself. Government feels like if it goes then the rest of the world has no chance.

This version of government shows no shame when it comes to running for its life. This new government has replaced chi with fear in a way that makes fear its life-blood. It serves as the catalyst for getting things done.

This new version of government can cache fear into memory and maintain it with very few resources, were as before fear had to constantly be retrieved from some frightful event. This new cached fear method dynamically removes 'for the people' and instantiates a new method called 'for the government' whenever the going gets tough.

  Does this mean the constitution has to be ratified to fit the new system? No, because that is the beauty of stealth. The constitution can remain sacred, undisturbed and intact while the new government supersede it.

What looks like a violation of the constitution doesn't matter if the fear-level is raised high enough and government knows the password to the fear machine (^f#!%$#xterr$oris@t).

This transition from old to new is suppose to be transparent to we the voters because voters are more informed and in touch with the realities of today's world. In other words, the voters realize the old system wouldn't work in today's world so they view this new government as natural selection.

Just remember, the more of a unified front the voters can present when it comes to participating in the democratic process on election day, the stronger the democracy will appear.

Selfish voters who want to have their way will find this upgraded government cumbersome and difficult to accept. Things like mandates don't matter because they require a bi-directional path as in 'you are sent up by an overwhelming majority to find a solution for the people, then you are to send down the results to the people'. The new version of government don't waste time parsing what is sent up, it just sends down what it wants to the people based on what it thinks is best for government.

Technically this is legal under the constitution because the words "the people" were never really defined. Assumptions were formed that has no basis in a court of constitutional law as to who "the people" is referring to.

Politicians don't mind voters assuming "the people" means voters. In fact, they encourage it because they know what they plan to do when they get to Washington, so it really doesn't matter to them. The mandate is to be a good representative for the government when you come to Washington.

There are plenty of incentives to entice politicians to be representatives for the government instead of for the people. "You shall not muzzle and ox when it is treading out the grain" is the principal politicians are applying to themselves. Being the representative for the people was a job but being the representative for the government is a career.

What happens when the new version of government gets it wrong and send down bad results? No problem, just use some of the fear that is in the cache and suddenly the politicians are viewed as liberators.

When someone is trying to kill you, you don't argue with those who say they will protect you. This new stealthy version of government is a master at framing good-guy bad-guy issues so that the need for more government becomes inevitable.

What choice do the people have but to play the 'of the people, by the people, for the people' charade? What's good for government is good for the people right? So let government decide what is best because they would never get anything done if they were told what to do and forced to represent the voters.

Immigration Reform

  The term 'immigration reform' is a moochenym because it is part meaningless and partly implies moral superiority.

Engaging in fear mongering to advance an agenda requires a lot of skill, a lot of luck, and a lot of stupidity before one can claim success. They say politics make strange bedfellows and a look into the bloodline of Immigration Reform confirms it without a doubt.

National security has given birth to a wayward child-Immigration Reform (IR) and this child has become a terror to its gaurdians.

You would think that an America with secure borders would be the delight of everyone who is losing sleep over the thought of terrorist sneaking into the country and killing everybody; after all, that is all the imigration reform legislation is suppose to do.

Evidently some folks are not as afraid of terrorist as they say they are. If they were, then, in their minds the borders could never be too secure.

You can't talk immigration reform without respect to National Security. By the way, Presidential politics (PP) is the proud parent of National Security (NS), so that makes IR the wayward grandchild of Presidential politics.

  Like any loving family there seems to always be a rich Uncle and a crazy Aunt somewhere. All families have problems of some sort or another but IR is a child who was definitely born under a bad sign.

For instance, just take his Dad NS. He suffers from a severe case of schizophrenia which often cause disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations.

Since he is the Dad they try to give him respect and work with him because being in his position isn't easy. The problem is they never know when his condition is going to flare up and to what extent. He walks around saying things like horses can run on rocks and oxen can plow the sea but America's borders can't be breached. Somehow he manages to get an applause when he talks like that, so somebody out there understands him.

Then there is his Grand Dad PP, who made his living as a pimp. He took care of all the lewd fetishes of corporations. Things like doing it in someone else's country for cheap and doing it with many for the price of one.

Now when PP's clients saw that IR had come out of the closet and was saying things that could jeopardize their fun they told PP he need to take care of this little problem. PP tried to convince his son NS to distance himself from IR for now because IR was about to have an untimely accident. NS ran this by some of his cousins and they hated the idea. They told NS to tell PP it doesn't work that way. When PP heard this he thought it was time for all the cousins on both sides of the family to get together and hammer out a solution that would make everybody happy.

Poor IR has to sit and watch as the family feuds over him. All he wants is to just be loved. The problem is IR has some kinfolks who represent people who only want him to act in a way that is pleasing to them.

A lot PP's cousins have been sleeping with the very clients he has been pimping and now they refuse to get out of bed because they love it so much. This type of behavior has finally come to the attention of the folks these cousins are suppose to be married to and representing.

Because IR is young and innocent he is not aware of this or the meaning to a lot of the things that are said about him. His name has become synonymous with scapegoat.

IR doesn't know that a lot of corporations are depending on him to keep wages down. He thinks all borders are the same and should be treated equally. He doesn't know anything about terrorist. He doesn't know anything about changing demographics and the White race fearing their culture will be lost. He doesn't Even know his name, IR, is a misnomer. His real name is Mexican Reform (MR). He doesn't even know he is Mexican.

All he wants is to just be loved.

Bling Bling

  To a politician the words 'tax cut' are like silver bullets these days and I wonder why given the history behind them. Those magic words get you elected and make you look like you are in touch with reality. On the other hand, the words 'raise taxes' are like kryptonite; they can zap the strength out of the strongest campaigns.

I have never seen a tax cut that caused my taxes to go down. So-called 'tax cuts' have a way of shifting taxes from one area of your life to another. They may go down here but they go up there, so where is the cut? Truth is, the tax cut craze is nothing but a shell game being played by all level of government. Federal, State and Local governments are only after one thing, your money. If one can't get it the other one will. It is like an elaborate tag-team match being waged against your pocketbook.

I remember Ronald Reagan's so-called 'big tax cut' in the '80s. Maybe I just wasn't rich enough to really appreciate it, so this article is written from the perspective of the average middle-class taxpayer which I consider myself to be.

My state taxes increased almost simultaneously with Reagan's federal tax cut, so my paycheck didn't get any bigger. State taxes use to be the least of my worries when April 15th rolled around each year, not anymore. The reduction in federal tax revenue means states don't get the block grant money from the feds anymore. States now have to fend for themselves and they have really adapted to the process of doing so.

State taxes have skyrocketed to the point where they do more damage to a paycheck than the feds were doing before the so-called 'big tax cut'. States that don't have a state tax have concocted ways to extract revenue out of working people in ways that were unthinkable before the big tax cut.

Every year the revenue generating schemes become more elaborate and the taxpayers get squeezed a little tighter, all the while the politicians keep echoing a cry for more tax cuts.

In order for Government to function requires some taxes. Government would function efficiently if it knew it didn't have a cash cow to tap into every time it had to make simple fiscal decisions. Rather than focus on government mismanagement I'll just say we all know that government and money doesn't mix. Money makes the government ambitious and an ambitious government can be detrimental to taxpayers.

A new frontier is opening up in the war on taxpayers and it is called 'local taxes'. Local and city taxes are becoming more than a blimp on the radar screen. With each big federal tax cut the state and local governments become more desperate for revenue to make up the shortfall.

The term 'big tax cut' is a meaningless goodwill gesture politicians like to place at the center of their campaigns. Next time you hear it, ask yourself are they talking about cutting my taxes across the board or do they mean cutting them here and raising them there?

Federal, State and Local have become a union when it comes to taxes, so any cut has to take into account all three levels. Cutting federal while at the same time raising state and local doesn't amount to a cut at all. In the end the taxpayer pays more taxes while receiving a tax cut. Politicians are crafty when it comes to money and how to siphon it away from taxpayers. Rather than risk upsetting the apple cart they know how to shift tactics and frame issues in a way that pits taxpayer against taxpayer.

Smoker tax, gambler tax, property tax and luxury tax were all heightened by the 'big tax cut'. State sanctioned gambling was frowned upon prior to the 'big tax cut'. Now lotteries, casinos and gambling houses are out of control. The allure of hitting the big one has been a shot in the arm to state governments. They can make up a lot of their revenue shortfall by willful means.

The desire to be rich is so great that states are taking advantage every chance they get to capitalize on this human flaw. Jackpots are bigger, casinos are closer and wealth is being glamorized to the point where being less that mega-rich is viewed as a form of failure.

It's the principal of the matter that bothers me. I hate to be used as a politician's pawn. Don't tell me how you cut my taxes when in reality my taxes went up. We all know what is happening here, so don't rub salt in my wounds.

Cutting taxes is killing the middle class and it makes you wonder...
I wonder if raising federal taxes will cause my property taxes to go down?

I wonder if raising federal taxes will stop my sister from paying more taxes than the average millionaire due to her lottery addiction?

I wonder if raising federal taxes will remove the hidden cost associated with hotel rooms and rental cars?

I wonder if raising federal taxes will stop the school children from begging so much when their school sponsor an event?

I wonder if raising federal taxes will cause a reduction in my state taxes?

I wonder if raising federal taxes will eliminate local and city taxes?

If the answer to any of these is yes, then, will somebody please give me a big federal tax increase.

Black History Month

Steriods

The Never Ending War on Drugs

  The nation's war on drugs is both a meaningless goodwill gesture and meaningless phrase, so no question about it, it has to be a moochenym. Drugs play too important a role in the system to lend itself to being defeated in war.

Drugs come in many forms and have a wide range of characteristics, so rather than address drugs in general this article focuses on cocaine and its derivatives. In 1973 the Nixon administration officially launched the war on drugs. Today we have a cabinet position dedicated to the cause, that position is drug czar.

A war that has lasted almost thirty-five years can viewed two ways; in all that time we have managed to stay undefeated; in all that time we still haven't won. The war on drugs has never been clearly defined and that is why it drags on. In the mist of the war, drug proliferation has increased and the demand hasn't diminished, so who are the adversaries in the war on drugs?

The justice department would be the official plaintiff if you had to put a face on the players in the this war. Their case is ambiguous at best when it comes to execution of a coherent strategy and a clear-cut goal to win the war.

After thirty-five years of double-talk and failure to produce results at the federal level, the war on drugs has taken on different meanings to those subordinates at the state and local levels of government. Money grubbing legislators have tapped in on the lucrative windfall that surrounds the drug war.

There is gold in drugs, especially cocaine.

They say 'drugs kill dreams' and it's true, drugs also create jobs, lots of jobs. Drugs begat drug laws and drug laws are a great weapon the arsenal of the justice department.

There are several towns throughout the country whose economies are directly linked to drug proliferation in one way or another. I'm talking about jobs that the citizens of those towns depend on for their livelihood. Drugs mean jobs for the court system, the law enforcement agencies, the hospitals and almost every industry including the automotive.

So why fight a war that if victorious, would take away the people's livelihood? You don't is the answer. You call it a war but in reality it is a 'strategic undertaking'. Strategic undertakings are never clear and almost never yield the intended results.

Cocaine is the great tide that is lifting both the drug yachts and kayaks. Any advancement in the war that threatens the flow of this drug will always be met with a counter maneuver that out-flanks the aggressor. A serious effort to halt the flow of cocaine can never happen because it is viewed as an instrument of wealth, in the portfolio of social prerogatives.

Inhibiting wealth is a cardinal sin in the eyes of capitalist. Crack cocaine have proven to be nothing short of phenomenal in that it has done things to the black community that even astonishes the ku klux klan. Don't look for the drug war to cause any cessation in the crack trade anytime soon.

Shows like cops wouldn't be on the air if it wasn't for drugs and the fear-factor they present. The American appetite for seeing street criminals hauled off to jail has stoked police budget debates all over the country. The local municipalities have gotten in on the act by sending out camera crews to get footage of officers nabbing the bottom feeders of the drug trade in order to justify their budget request.

Most drug arrest are of the bottom feeder variety, so the real source of the problem always remain intact. In a real war the strategy would be to go after the enemy's stronghold or disrupt the supply line. Since the war on drugs has no similarities to a real war that strategy makes no sense.

I haven't even mentioned the huge role of organized crime nor have I mentioned the state department's friendly policies towards countries that grow the stuff. As you can see there is no chance for the drug war to ever end in victory, victory being defined as a serious disruption in the cocaine flow for an indefinite period of time.

I guess the terms 'war on drugs' and 'drug czar' help create a warm and fuzzy feeling in those who don't want to face the realities of how entrenched drugs are in this society.

We are drug people; both legal and illegal and will always be because of the complexity of this society.

A successful war on drugs would create an awkward America, awkward like a prostitute in a suit of armor. The drug itch demands being scratched and no war can change that.

I wish there was a strong and effective war against illegal drugs because in the long run the country would win. Drugs create jobs and that glosses over and hides the fact that drugs kill dreams and makes life a nightmare for so many innocent bystanders.