I’m really exhausted by our national discussion on politics. This healthcare bill has just sucked the life out of me, ironically.
I am completely conflicted and no party adequately represents what I believe or think – meaning, no one supports things that benefits only me. It sounds evil, but I’m not really interested in things that doesn’t at least benefit me in some way. Schools, libraries, meat inspections, social security, etc. – I’m all for that because I’m surrounded by its benefits either all the time or at some point in life. That’s good policy – it benefits everyone.
On the other hand, things like food stamps, affirmative action and Judge Judy really bother me. Programs like food stamps are hard to get off of, work poorly, subsidize shit food that later causes more expenses when people get fat and unhealthy and I personally know three people that game that system for no good reason. It’s these programs that could go away tomorrow and I wouldn’t care – they benefit few. That’s not good policy. The fixes to these will have to wait for another post.
Republicans
I hate spending money. I hate waste. I hate wasted money with a passion. A good Republican would too. Now, our current crop sucks, but they’re some good ones in there – Ron Paul, Mitch Daniels and a few others. I want people that cut the crap and do the work.
I also like the general conservative outlook on life that you can’t rely on other people for everything – you have to get up and go do something to get anything out of life and to live comfortably. To me, this translates to “work hard, be nice, play fair, do well”. I like that idea. Notice I said, “play fair”. This doesn’t mean companies can mistreat workers or invent new kinds of cheeses made from lead to reduce costs to raise profits on cheeseburgers.
And, I loathe laziness, I loathe lazy people and I respect two things very much: loyalty and timeliness. Two things that go well together and make for a great person. Get up, commit to a cause, do it, do it well and do it on time – with as few resources as possible.
Basically: shut up, quit whining and work hard.
Democrats
Some people are just so stupid, they require someone of authority to tell them they’re wrong. Whether that’s companies doing evil things like dumping sludge in a river or some hick who picks fights with blacks and gays. Democrats, generally, do a good job of looking out for individuals, as people.
Also, I think our current crop of Democrats are just ever-so-slightly better at being better politicians. They seem more interested in governing and less interested in just winning elections (but only slightly). I respect that.
And, I want to be around people who like to think every now and again and don’t always resort to “it’s in the Bible” for every argument they can’t win. A good Democrat wouldn’t.
Basically: think for a second and be nice to people.
The Problem
My issue with all of this is that those kinds of people don’t seem to coexist, or at least not on a national level. Heck, not even on a state or local level. Maybe it’s generational, maybe I’m just weird.
But I have a problem with how “easy” it feels to me for poor people. I mean really poor – like $10,000 a year and less poor. Yes, I know, they’re poor and they usually live in squalor, but dangit, if a person really knew what was available to them, it wouldn’t be unfair to assume a person could get cheap living in decent areas – maybe not in Indy where you’d be in the ghetto, but in small, rural towns. You could get $150 a week in food (I only spend $40 a week), you could get free healthcare (even before the health bill) and you could get funding to go to school at the drop of a hat if you wanted it. All because you don’t have anything. And those people still don’t bother to seek a way out – probably because the system makes it so much easier to do nothing. We call them “entitlement” programs – I’d prefer if we redefined them to, “safety net” programs that are there to get you back on your feet and shove you back into the real world.
Yet, if you make more than a few pennies, you get turned away at every corner for everything. You’re left to fend for yourself while you watch the poor get help and the rich get richer. I think that’s called “the crumbling middle class”.
Last year, in a series of “town-hall meetings” across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama’s proposed healthcare reforms.
What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence.
Polling evidence suggests that the numbers who think the reforms go too far are nearly matched by those who think they do not go far enough.
But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform – the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state – are often the ones it seems designed to help.
In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.
This was a particularly fascinating piece:
In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.
He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:
Gore: “Under the governor’s plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he’s modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries.”
Bush: “Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers.
“I’m beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy math. It’s trying to scare people in the voting booth.”
Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense – but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.
For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: “One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.
In summary: most Americans are idiots that can’t do simple logic, reasoning or evidently, math.
Obama said a few things today. Generally, he came across as a smart ass which I absolutely want to see more of. As I always say, “It’s a heckuva lot better than being a dumbass.”
What gets me is that there wasn’t anything that man said that anyone should disagree with. If so, you only disagree with what you perceive as his personal agenda to “git ya”. Frankly, if anyone disagrees with these things you should go bury your head in cement:
Everyone should have access to healthcare – i.e., no dropping people when they’re at their weakest and don’t deny people for things that happened to them in the past.
The last 8 years of Republican spending have left us in a hole.
Obama’s current spending has caused more debt, but I (and even Mr. Anti-Deficit Gov. Mitch Daniels) credit him for at least attempting to throw something different at the wall to see if it sticks.
Government is here to give a voice to the minorities – you pricks that think gays should be shut out of everything in life should shut up and piss off. If you hate ‘em so bad, why not stick ‘em on the front lines so they can be shot at and killed like everyone else that wants to. How Republicans can’t get past that is beyond me.
Companies deserve to be “fairly compensated and rewarded”, but I don’t think our forefathers envisioned a world where a handful of companies could kill, pillage and rape the earth and our citizens like the kinds of companies we have today. (See: Monsanto, Dow Agro, Aetna, Wellpoint, News Corp, etc.)
People have got to stop telling the other party “NO” just because they’re of the other party. I swear, I lost all hope in this democracy when Al Franken’s “Anti-Rape” bill didn’t pass in ten seconds. Senate Republicans cock-blocked him on every possible attempt. What the heck is wrong with you people?!
Our nation’s universities have got to get over themselves and stop thinking of themselves as two-faced public/private entities. You can’t have it both ways. Cut your crap and make your product cheap and good.
Banks can go to hell.
Iraq has to put up or shut up. Get your shit together because we’re tired of dealing with your hell hole. We have plenty of hell holes right here in America – like Elkhart, Indiana.
Politicians have to grow some balls.
If nothing else, I was hoping he’d at least announce a plan to cap foreclosures. Foreclosures aren’t good for anyone. If a family of four is foreclosed on, you end up with four homeless people needing more assistance, you have a neighborhood with an empty house ready for criminals to jump into and you screw with the kids’ educational attainment because they likely get shuffled to a new school. If you get laid off or make a decent attempt at starting a rational business or get slammed with a ridiculous healthcare bill, then by god, if you can’t make your payments in a recession banks have to be forced to forgo foreclosing on you for at least 12-18 months. And, they have to give you the chance to pay back the owed payments during that time. The only people that want that foreclosed house is the people that lived there.
Also, Republicans have to stop giggling every time someone mentions Twitter of Facebook. You wonder why you’re so out of touch with young Americans (people under the age of 40). It’s because everything you do is fake and half-assed.
I was driving home today from running a few errands and I was thinking about Air America Radio.
When I first started working for the Court, I came across Air America and found it to be a pretty good way of passing the day. Music stations get cumbersome to me and since I was only an intern, I didn’t spend much time configuring iTunes with a bunch of podcasts (there weren’t that many then, anyway).
I generally liked Air America. Surprisingly, I enjoyed Jerry Springer’s talk show. It wasn’t like his TV show and he was rather thoughtful to his callers and offered good, centrist, opinions. Mind you, most others on the radio like Rachel Maddow and Randi Rhodes were far, far left of center.
This week, Air America died. It declared bankruptcy after years of financial trouble. The folks at FOX no doubt had a heyday with the news.
As I was driving, I realized why Air America failed – their audience is way too progressive to be listening to a radio. I only listened because it was the only thing available. Once I started working full-time and had more and more tech-related podcasts, I dropped listening to Air America. Plus, Jerry Springer had moved on and Rachel Maddow got her show on MSNBC.
It occurs to me why Republican-radio is so popular. The people that would actually listen to Republican-radio are old enough to actually own radios in places other than their cars. All the same reason why Republicans have such epic failures each year figuring out this new-fangled Internet. So, Republicans like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly will claim they destroyed Air America when really it was just bad distribution. Air America never put up full-length podcasts and only had an Internet stream that was shoddy and poor like every other radio stream online.
Senator Al Franken (D – Minnesota) recently kicked some serious ass on the Senate floor while debating Sen. Jon Thune (R – S. Dakota). RawStory has some quotes:
WASHINGTON — In a few moments of heated but controlled anger on the Senate floor Monday evening, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) slammed Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and the GOP for essentially lying about the nature of the Democratic health care bill, suggesting they haven’t read it.
“We are entitled to our own opinions; we’re not entitled to our own facts,” Franken said. “Benefits kick in right away.”
My favorite part: “Facts are stubborn things.”
I have my own opinions on the healthcare bill, but as one Digg commenter mentioned regarding this video, “Franken is just goddamned awesome.”
Frankly, I had no doubt in my mind that Franken would make for a great Senator. We need more like him — on both sides of the aisle.
Since it’s now Christmas, I was looking for a video clip of Mr. Burns discussing how he’d be visited by “Three Socialist Ghosts” on Christmas Eve to make him more charitable. Since I couldn’t find a clip (Simpsons clips are very hard to find), I did run across something else on YouTube which was equally funny.
This was someone taking the “Make John McCain Exciting Challenge” issued by Stephen Colbert, who posted a boring piece of McCain footage online and asked the nation to “Make McCain Exciting”. Here is one of the submissions:
This won’t win me any points with teachers and school administrators. But, I’m going to say it anyway: you’re awfully redundant.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is cutting $300 million from Indiana’s public school system. Frankly, I have a feeling there’s probably about half a billion dollars in waste across the state that could easily be found. Heck, I don’t doubt that $300 million could be cut from Lake County’s corrupt excuse for a government alone.
But, most of the state operates out of small, local schools. Like my Alma Mater down in Salem. Salem schools operates alongside two other schools in Washington County. East Washington Schools has 1,716 students. West Washington has 896 and Salem has the largest enrollment at 2,125. All together, there are just 4,373 students in all of Washington County.
There are 7 administrators in Salem’s system, 7 at East Washington and 3 at West Washington making 17 administrators. So, Salem has 7 administrators (principals, superintendents, etc.) and East Washington has 7. Yet, East Washington has about half as many students as Salem. And West Washington has about half as many students as East Washington and has 3. It should be noted that 3 is the lowest they’ve had since 1999. They had up to 5 in their hay day when they had 500 fewer students!
Clearly, something is wrong with this picture.
Let’s be conservative and say each of their superintendents makes $100,000 a year. Which, judging by the Star’s metro-area database, is rather conservative. $300,000 a year is made up of just three people. Add in principals, making say, $70,000 a year and you’ve racked up $700,000.
$1,000,000 a year in administrative salaries. That’s $229 per student in Washington County. I can assure you there probably isn’t even that much money spent annually in all of Washington County on food and water.
Don’t get me wrong. Schools need principals and superintendents. Yet, for reasons I can’t explain, Salem has two principals (not a principal and vice-principal, that’s TWO principals) for just grades K-5. They have a principal and vice-principal for grades 6-8 and ditto for 9-12.
Again, something is wrong with this.
Don’t even get me started on the number of assistants to the assistants and assistant assistants. Part of the need for all the assistants is to trudge reports and crap on to the state. Which, may or may not be useful, but much of this manual data-entry into crappy spreadsheets could be easily consolidated into automated systems that follow students rather than following schools. Get on that, IOT.
I’d go as far to argue that superintendents are redundant when you factor in school boards. It’s like having a Congress and a President. We see where that gets us.
Here’s a hallelujah idea:
Have 1 county superintendent
Push all administrative duties into one building in Salem. People in East and West Washington’s systems will say this is inconvenient, but it’s no different from having a county courthouse.
Close the other, now-empty, administrative buildings and sell ‘em.
I bet with all the consolidation, you can probably lose a couple support staffers through attrition. You don’t need 6 people to answer phones when you have two-thirds less phones.
Assistant principals can go away through attrition. I can assure you that existing staff and the principal can do the job of discipline and walking the halls during passing periods. Not that big of a deal.
Save $1.5 million annually.
Or, if you prefer, put half a million towards things people like. Like books. Or computers. Or teacher bonuses. Or heck, put it in savings and give the million back to the taxpayers.
One of these days I’ll get ambitious enough to research Warren Townships schools where I currently pay taxes to. I’m sure that’ll make me scream. I already loathe that they send everyone in this township a quarterly newsletter. And we’re not talking a piece of paper folded in half. It’s a full-scale publication with professional printing and mailing costs.
My name is Justin Harter. I’m a home-owning, tax-paying resident of Indianapolis’ Warren Township. Aside from all the banter regarding township government in Marion County, I have a more important issue. It’s about the Homestead Tax Deduction.
You see, I bought my house in October of 2007. I was told that because the home I bought wasn’t owner-occupied prior to my purchase, I would need to file for a Homestead Tax Deduction. Currently, my mortgage for a modest three bedroom home north of Beech Grove costs $906 a month. That includes principal, taxes and insurance.
I filed for my deduction in November 2007. Gov. Daniels, you signed an order extending the Homestead Tax Deduction deadline a few months when taxpayers erupted at poor assessments in Marion County. Unfortunately, I still did not get covered. That meant I had to wait until May before the changes would, in theory, take effect.
No such luck. Since Indiana pays taxes one year in arrears, my tax deduction wouldn’t take effect until May 2008. At that point, I’d still have to wait ANOTHER year before I’d start seeing deductions on my monthly mortgage payments. I expect to save nearly $250-$300 a month when the deduction finally applies.
At this rate, over the last three years, come November 2009, I will have paid $9,000 in additional taxes that should never have applied in the first place if one could just walk to the Assessor’s office and simply file for the exemption and have the changes take effect in a few months.
In terms of our economy, do you know what I could do with an extra $250 a month? Or what I could do with $9,000? I could pay off nearly half of my car. Or, I could have been paying the same $906 a month and paid off my mortgage in a fraction of the 30 year term.
Has anyone given any thought to changing the way Indiana files Homestead Exemptions?
Sincerely,
Justin Harter
Indianapolis, District 89
Editor’s Note: This message has been mailed to Ind. Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) and State Rep. John Barnes (D., Indianapolis).
San Francisco — After a Lutheran school expelled two 16-year-old girls for having “a bond of intimacy” that was “characteristic of a lesbian relationship,” the girls sued, contending the school had violated a state anti-discrimination law.
In response to that suit, an appeals court decided this week that the private religious school was not a business and therefore did not have to comply with a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating.
This borders on giving private schools the authority to discriminate. Maybe next year Indiana and California ought to switch shades of blue.
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