Teabagging… again…

Published
by
seanb
on 2 July 2009
in Healthcare and Society
. 0 Comments

The teabaggers were out at the corner of Le Jeune Road and Coral Way in Coral Gables tonight, protesting “Obama’s Health Plan,” decrying universal health care as being “too expensive”.

I’m not quite sure what “too expensive” is. Of course, on that note, I’m not quite sure what “universal health care” is.

In some fashion, we already provide universal health care in the United States. If you’re dying and walk into Jackson Memorial Hospital, or Celebration Hospital (for that matter) in Celebration, Florida, the hospital is duty-bound and morally obligated to do its level best to deliver their best care to keep you alive.

Who gets to pay for that care? If you can’t, we all do in some way. Either the hospital’s charity picks up the tab, or they get a write-off on their taxes because you can’t pay it.

I don’t sit here contending that we should be paying for everyone’s non-reconstructive cosmetic surgery, Lasik procedures, or peoples’ Sildenafil citrate (google it if you need to…) But as a country, just based on principle, we should be willing to ensure that everyone has the same crack at a liver that Steve Jobs had a month ago, and that crack at that liver shouldn’t be based on one’s net worth.

If we can throw billions after billions at AIG, Bank of America, and their ilk, we can’t afford not to embrace this.

Obama changes tactic on Iran…

Published
by
seanb
on 24 June 2009
in Elections, Obama, Political and Voting
. 0 Comments

… only he really didn’t.

And if he did, show me because I can’t see it.

From the Monday following the elections, to yesterday’s comments in his news conference, President Obama has railed against the vicious treatment protesters in Iran have received at the hands of the Basiji.

He has stopped short of calling the results of the elections illegitimate; however, is that really the place of our President? The last one to say something he wasn’t absolutely sure about ended up getting us involved in two wars, tanking our economy, and generally ransacking our international prestige in the process, so much so that Obama is still working hard to right the ship.

Barack Obama spoke initially in measured tones on the issue. Yesterday he was a bit more forceful in his rhetoric…

Perhaps that change in timbre is what is meant by a “change in tactic.”

But I still don’t see it.

Oh no… Obama wants to socialize our healthcare system!!!

Published
by
seanb
on 22 June 2009
in Elections, News, Obama and Voting
. 0 Comments

One of the fundamental economic issues facing our republic in today’s world is the “problem” of healthcare costs spiraling out of control.

In most Western economies, healthcare is provided by a national health system paid for by everyone through various taxing schemes (income, value added, etc.). In this regard, most Western economies do provide healthcare “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” if Karl Marx will please excuse my profane use of his oft-cited quotation. It is argued by many on the right that were the United States to move in the direction of such a nationally-provided healthcare system, our quality of care would suffer and stagnate because of added layers of bureaucracy that would be added.

Even President Obama in his desire to pass some form of healthcare reform has declared such a single-payer system to be “off the table” for the purposes of this year’s attempts at passing this, yet many on the right continue to rail against Obama’s plans as a potential “back door” to allow single-payer healthcare at a later time.

What I’d like to know is: what makes our congressional leaders (in both houses) so much better than us that they can obtain health insurance for themselves AND their spouses for roughly $290 per month? On top of this, they have access to physicians at their place of work, and have access to the Naval medical centers so prevalent around DC. If they happen to need prescriptions (with the mean age of them approaching 60, who of them could POSSIBLY need that), they have a great prescription drug plan.

We already pay these people $175,000+ per year, which is slightly more than four-times what the average Joe the Plumber makes… add to that the health benefits, and these are some pretty cushy jobs that you and me pay for.

So what I’d like to see happen for healthcare is either you and me get the option of choosing the healthcare plan of our senators and/or representative, or this same congress cobbles together a plan, like Medicare, that is made optional for those of us who have no health insurance, or who think we can get a better deal on the national plan.

Chances are I’d stick with my employer-provided option, because I’m quite happy with the HMO that I have been enrolled in.

But the time has come to level the playing field between us and our worldwide competitors when it comes to getting EVERYONE access to the best healthcare we ALL can afford.

La mejora Sotomayor…

Published
by
seanb
on 29 May 2009
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve written here; however, someone walked up to me in conference yesterday and asked if I write this blog. That has given me some renewed vigor in terms of writing this blog. I also hadn’t known that the only progressive talk radio station in town has changed format – again. So, I think for this post, I’ll take on Barack Obama’s pick to replace Justice David Souter, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second District.

Judge Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1976, and received her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1979. Like her nominator, President Barack Obama, Sotomayor has not only practiced law, but has also taught law at New York University School of Law and at Columbia Law School. Raised primarily by her mother, she is of Pureto Rican descent, having grown up in The Bronx borough of New York City. However, her intellect has been called into question by “leading” Republican politicos, while she has been denounced as a racist by some others. Let’s address first the claim that Sotomayor is a racist.

The claim that Judge Sotomayor is a racist has been made by several high-profile members of the Republican Party, including Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. This is based on the fact that Sotomayor has indicated in the past that it would be difficult to separate her upbringing from the day-to-day task of ruling on cases which she faces as a jurist. Similar statements have been made by other, more conservative-leaning nominees, to the highest court in the land. For example, Justice Samuel Alito has said pretty much the same thing. My opinion on this is simply that we all grow up in different communities, each of which shape our own backgrounds. It is difficult, if not impossible, to separate one’s shaping from one’s actions in life.

Insofar as Judge Sotomayor’s intellect is concerned, Karl Rove seems to have some questions about the intellect of someone who graduated with highest honors from Princeton, who graduated Yale Law and sat on their Law Review. Makes me wonder what he truly thought of his former boss… who also went to prestigious schools, but who obviously didn’t graduate with similar praise.

Your thoughts, as always, are welcome…

Accept it… embrace it… learn it… let’s move on!

Published
by
seanb
on 24 March 2009
in News, Newspapers and Society
. 0 Comments

In reading this article from the New York Times, about four Michigan daily newspapers that will either cease publication or will move to an on-line format, I find myself asking: “Why all the hubbub about the death of the daily newspaper?”

For sure, dailies nationwide have been the source of much important journalism, shining a disinfectant spotlight on corrupt politicians, standing up for the common man, and, in general, writing about the local. But just because newspapers are moving away from the environmentally-unsustainability that is the paper and ink with which they have been printed, this does not necessarily need to be the maudlin affair most newspapers have cast it in.

Of course, this is me writing: someone who has sworn off paper anything and, who for the last couple months has been able, by and large, to practice what I preach when it comes to being paperless. “There are those out there who don’t read the news online, and who won’t be able to get riled up by looking at a web page with the news on it,” may be the response.

My question to them is: “why not?” For years, the quarter you’ve paid the newsstand vendor has never really ever paid for the content of the paper. It’s gone to pay for the distribution of the content – namely the delivery boy, or that newsstand vendor I just mentioned. Papers have, for years, existed off of their advertising revenue, and have, for years, relied on this revenue to pay their reporters, editors, and clerical staff to run their huge organizations.

My response to this is: “Grow up.” The Internet has come of age. Stop trying to control content, and embrace it. We still need good journalism to keep that spotlight shone on those corrupt politicians. Find a way to work with your advertisers to move your ads to the Internet. Google has been able to do this on a worldwide scale, you locals should be able to do this for that which is local.

To those who refuse to get their news via the Internet, I also say “Grow up.” Get used to the digital. Sure, paper can be recycled, and that does help reduce the amount of energy put into its production; but, really, do you absolutely have to hold that newspaper in your hands, getting that toxic ink all over the place, in order to be satisfied that you’re getting the best news from anywhere?

Realize this: the PAPER portion of the NewsPAPER industry is dead. There is absolutely no way it can be sustained – economically or environmentally. Those NEWS organizations that realize this will understand this. They will Accept it… They will embrace it… they will learn it…

Let’s move on.

Help me figure this out…

Published
by
seanb
on 11 March 2009
in Congress, Martinez, Nelson, Society and Unionization
. 0 Comments

I wrote all of my elected Federal representatives yesterday, encouraging all of them, in both houses of Congress, to support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). EFCA adds the ability of a simplified “checkbox” style vote for employees to vote to form a union. My state’s senators, Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez came down on different sides of this issue – and both wrote me to explain their positions; but, both also wrote me two diametrically opposed points of fact.

Continue reading ‘Help me figure this out…’

Why the focus on health care reform?

Published
by
seanb
on 8 March 2009
in Economy, Healthcare, Obama and Society
. 1 Comment

The financial crisis in which we find this country is the worst since the Great Depression, this much has been widely posited by both sides of the aisle in Congress – oh, and Joe Lieberman. I agree that we need to do whatever we can in order to get us out of the mess. But I’m curious about Obama’s focus on health care at a time like this. Why not abandon that hope, for the present, and work on What Seems To Be The Right Thing To Work On? (namely, the economy, stupid – to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s catchphrase from his era)

In speaking some time ago with a very wise individual, my father Larry Bossinger, he told me what he thought was the reason we need health care reform: most other industrial nations have government-provided, or single-payer, health care systems. Health care is not a cost borne by industry – directly, anyhow… it is borne by everyone through taxes. Thus, companies like Toyota in Japan, Volkswagen in Germany, Fiat in Italy, and Renault in France, don’t have the huge bills for healthcare that companies here in the States do – like GM, Ford, and Chrysler, or, dare I say, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.

I’m not convinced a single-payer system is what we need to move toward… but I am convinced that we do need to find a solution so that every American, regardless of income or ability to pay, is guaranteed the best possible primary and emergency health care available. I would even go so far as to suggest that access to health care in an economy so prosperous as ours is a fundamental human right.

If we can borrow trillions to invade a sovereign country where it wasn’t required, we sure can figure out this problem in a way that is equitable to all, and levels our playing field.

Obama’s Speech – Jindal’s Rebuttal

Published
by
seanb
on 25 February 2009
in Obama and Political
. 0 Comments

I was quite impressed with President Obama’s speech to the Joint Session of Congress last night. While there was not much that was substantively new, I appreciated the fact that he got up there and stated what has been on pretty much everyone’s mind lately. And while he didn’t make light of the subject, I do think he brought just the right touch of levity to the situation: We are in tough economic times, and we will have some political haggling, but we do need to remember who sent us here and do the work they want us to do.

What most impressed me about the speech was the three-legged approach to fixing the country’s economic ills that Obama proposed: fixing the health care problems, fixing education, and fixing banking. These three items are absolutely critical if we want to flourish as a nation. How we do it is where we will probably see more political bickering. This being said, I do appreciate Obama’s sense that he will listen to parties on all sides of an issue and welcomes ideas from all around.

After watching the speech, I debated with myself whether to turn off the tube and think about how happy I am we have an administration in power that seems to be making good on its promise to bring more transparency to DC. However, I really wanted to see what the Republican party would say in its response.

Watching Bobby Jindal speak took me back to some of my high school debates, figuratively speaking, of course. Jindal’s ideas, some of which resonated with me, came up short because of the style of delivery he chose – as if Mr. Jindal was talking down to children. While Obama is a tough act to follow when speaking, I hardly expected such a tentative response.

Insofar as the content of Jindal’s speech was concerned, I was most disappointed with the continued scary rhetoric that all the Democratic party wants to do is enlarge the government, particularly as it pertains to healthcare. While I wholly welcome the increase in taxes for those who make more than $250,000 per year, it hardly seems likely that we can afford to increase the size of our government. In fact, I would suggest that Obama’s plan doesn’t increase the size of government as much as it right-sizes it, building a foundation from which we can prosper once again. Applying the right amount of oversight, so that we can clean up messes like we have now, and prevent them from happening in the future, with an appropriate mix of regulation, rather than the irrational exuberance that was the hallmark of the last administration.

I feel that we are getting back onto the right track.

I welcome your comments.

What is going on here???

Published
by
seanb
on 2 February 2009
in Democracy, Obama and Political
. 0 Comments

I’m glad that one of the first things Obama did when he took office was to right the wrongs of the previous administration by signing executive orders stating the goals of a transparent administration guided by people who have no lobbying interests. Unfortunately, the second thing he did was to make an exception to this rule for messers Patterson and Lynn.

I am all for government transparency, and laud the efforts of this new administration; however, I do question the workability of these rules as we move forward.

The other things that Obama needs to work on are Geithner and Daschle. These gentlemen aren’t your run-of-the-mill citizens. They are smart people. Shouldn’t they have the money to hire accountants to make sure they aren’t cheating their once and future employer out out taxes?

I do my own taxes, and can appreciate one’s desire to do their own taxes, but come on – even my coworker officemate uses an accountant.

Where this blog is headed…

Published
by
seanb
on 19 November 2008
in Democracy and Obama
. 0 Comments

Now that Obama has been the president-elect for two weeks, I am in the process of figuring out where this blog is going to go.  I’ve never been a frequent blogger, but I think I might want to try doing that.

Ideas from my two readers will always be accepted.