CBO has too narrow a focus on health care

On the CBO's front page and all the headlines are about reducing the deficit. The talk about the health care law is only focused on how it will reduce the federal deficit, not how it will effect the actual amount Americans spend on health care. Here is the thing, like most reasonable people, if someone said that I can either see the cost of my health care go up by $1000 in my private spending or see my taxes go up by $500 I would rather see my taxes go up by $500 because I am better off. This perception people have which overemphasizes small increases in government spending while ignoring massive costs at the rest of our pocket books is going to ruin our nation, and I am not exaggerating, this has been the result of many well designed studies. We need to see a dollar as a dollar no matter where it enters or leaves our pocket books, to do otherwise is folly.

The CBO leaves out the big issue in this report which is overall health care spending for the country. Read it here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52486 even though they leave out the most important part of any health care legislation in this country.

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby

Busy day at the Supreme court, and the first one I will discuss is Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.

This decision is problematic, because they are saying any employer can opt out of a law because of religious beliefs. The biggest problem is here:

The court’s four liberal justices called it a decision of “startling breadth” and said that it allows companies to “opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

So, if I wanted to opt out of laws that prohibit me from killing someone and say it was my religious belief that I had to sacrifice a baby and a lamb on the third Wednesday of every month the Supreme Court's decision would say this is appropriate. Murder a little extreme? How about if I said that my neighbor's house offended my religion with its construction and burnt it down? Still extreme? I could go on, but this means that people don't have to follow the law if it doesn't fit with their religious beliefs perfectly. This opens the door to forced marriage from extreme groups (like what the Mormons did back when Joseph Smith was alive) and basically any group that wants to do anything they want. This is going to be overturned someday, but we are opening a dangerous precedent with this decision that extends beyond healthcare. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act which this decision is based on includes these types of dangers as well.

Another issue is how conservative religious groups are opposed to IUDs in general. IUDs are incredibly useful and since people are going to have sex anyways prohibiting IUDs is a pointless and frankly cruel decision. There is no law and there shouldn't be a law forcing anyone to use a IUDs, and prohibiting only IUDs is a very strange decision. This isn't protecting the religious freedom of those who are opposed to IUDs since it doesn't include other forms of birth control, but it is harming the ability for low-income families to access health products. This damages the government's ability to promote the general welfare, and misses the point completely on why we have laws to promote health in this country and that religious freedom does not include the right to impose your beliefs on others. Freedom of religion does not include imposing your religious beliefs on other which is exactly what this decision does. It shouldn't even be connected to abortion since wearing a IUDs to prevent pregnancy is a very different mechanism than an abortion. One would expect a religiously conservative Christian would be in favor of IUDs anyways since the Bible says nothing about IUDs (and in fact the only mention of abortion is in the Old Testament where it gives an ancient recipe to help a woman have an abortion) and if they were to follow Jesus' advice to love they neighbor would want to prevent unwanted pregnancies which when caused by rape or some other event can make a woman far worse off and struggle to pay the bills if she doesn't have a supportive partner and/or family. The very notion of opposing IUDs is contrary to the old Christian notion of charity (which is of course very similar to other world religions, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) and this type of behavior is what turns so many people off of religion when these people abuse these religious texts to take advantage of others.

Sidenote:
One final complaint with the people who are anti-woman is how they are misappropriating feminist and abolitionist Susan B. Anthony who like me was of Quaker heritage, like me attended a Unitarian church, and is my 6th cousin a few times removed. Our heritage is that of working on the Underground Railroad, like everyone I know of in our family was a feminist at some level (even the more conservative members of my family turn out to be feminist when you grill them about specific feminist issues). Claiming that she was opposed to abortion which if they knew anything about us Quakers and Unitarians (not all of my family is UU, but I have met a good number of UUs who are of Quaker heritage and have found a significant number on our family tree) would know how very wrong they are to misappropriate my heritage. I don't swear on my blog, but this pisses me off! Stop abusing my heritage!

This opposition to IUDs has nothing to do with freedom of religion. It is a war against the poor and women. As a feminist I am very unhappy with this decision and its implications.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/supreme-court-hobby-lobby-decision-contraception-mandate-108429.html

Update: 1 July 2014. This post originally stated that condoms were banned, this was factually incorrect and has been corrected to IUDs.

Interesting ad

I just saw an interesting ad on Obamacare from the far-right Heritage Foundation claiming how Obamacare is going to create long waiting lines and lower quality care.

However, this is not true because Obamacare is modeled after the German system (an individual mandate with a public option which was killed by the Dixiecrats) and the German system sees lower waiting times than the United States currently does. They are basing this off of Canada's system but Obamacare is not Medicare by a long shot. We also find with the OECD data that the wait times in the UK (which they are probably also basing their information off dropped by 52% from 2008 to 2010 with the NHS, meaning that the correlation between public health care and long wait times is fallacious.

Also remember that Canadian physicians are mostly private like the in the United States and Germany. Blaming it on having public or private health care is irresponsible.

I really wish organizations wouldn't make claims that are so completely wrong so frequently.

This took me less than 5 minutes to debunk the commercial's central complaint I haven't already addressed with the extremist's biggest fear, numbers.

Source:
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/health_glance-2011-en/06/08/index.html;jsessionid=as008die826bn.delta?contentType=&itemId=/content/chapter/health_glance-2011-59-en&containerItemId=/content/serial/19991312&accessItemIds=/content/book/health_glance-2011-en&mimeType=text/html

Canada is working towards making progress like the UK. https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/HCIC2012-FullReport-ENweb.pdf

The next 2 years,

Independence Day is a good day to look backwards at our accomplishments (emancipation, universal suffrage, civil rights, etc.) and look at what our country must do in the future. So that is my theme for today.

The United States currently has a large number of daunting problems/challenges, and a number of great opportunities:

1. Partisan gridlock and yellow journalism (the largest of whom are MSNBC and FOX) is tearing our nation apart. With such polarization it puts a lot of pressure on our leaders to lead extremely well to make it impossible for these pundits make them look bad or good depending on their point of view. Obamacare is a perfect example of how such biased reporting can skew people's opinions, as Kaiser points out where the majority of Americans don't know what Obamacare actually does. That the majority of Americans don't know what a major law does shows a clear failure in our country's media. Obama clearly needs to work on his PR.
2. Our two parties are at once closer than they should be and more distant than they have been in a long time. Everything the Democrats propose, even if it is taken practically word for word from a previous Republican proposal (like Obamacare and the Republican counterproposal in 1993) will be blocked from the Republicans. Most Americans when they turn on cable news get very biased and incomplete information about what is actually being proposed on the hill, and this furthers the partisan split as the Fox News watchers go one direction and the NBC folks go another. Very few people find the balanced center where you get the facts without the spin. This helps move our parties further and further apart in social issues with very little center in the middle, but on some issues like our constitutional freedoms (like the right to an attorney) neither the left nor right wing media is willing to tell the full truth and the parties further split on some core issues (like health care, whether there actually were weapons in Iraq, distribution of wealth and income, access to education, among others) and the coverage on some issues the media is so completely monotonous and frequently incorrect that there is little knowledge or debate about some pressing issues (like what should be done in Europe with the economy, Israel, North Korea, China, mass transit, among other issues). This force drives our two parties further to one side as they continue to get money from a select group of people that drive our policy. American policy is so much more diverse and there is so much more information about these issues than the media tells us, which eventually will be so clearly incorrect that a lot of Americans are going to be very disillusioned as the media grows further from reality.
3. We will need more parties and a new election system to represent the splitting of Democrats ("Old Democrats" and "New Democrats") and Republicans (Libertarians and Christian fundamentalists) which have such large differences between them that will make the parties unstable. If we don't I fear we will eventually have a situation like Canada in 2011 which will be devastating to the victors once the parties split. Changing our voting system will also help bridge the partisan divide because everyone can agree with the Libertarians on something, creating a bridge in congress between the two sides. It will allow more views to be represented in Congress that will be a more accurate picture of Americans' beliefs.
4. Our health care costs will continue to rise (though not as quickly as they have been) with Obamacare in place because it doesn't go far enough and it will need to be expanded upon and reevaluated.
5. Many students coming out of our education system today will be so unprepared to be in the world compared to their international peers because of the way the government finances and runs education which means it will need to be reevaluated. If we don't we will be beaten economically and our economy will suffer from the lack of knowledge our students will have.
6. We will need to reform our tax code so tax capital gains as regular income (like Australia) which will balance the budget and encourage investors to invest for the long-term so companies can use the money they give them, and give tax breaks to struggling American families to raise the demand curve. We will need to increase the incentives of businesses to hire people through taxes. If we don't our economy will remain unstable. This will also balance the budget. If we changed it we could become a very stable economy and surpass all other nations in economic growth.
7. Immigration reform will finish going through which will probably be more work visas for farm workers.

Happy Independence Day, let's make this country greater!

To politicize or not to politicize, that is the question

I just heard about the massacre in Connecticut (though if it happened in many countries it would be a non-event, in America over 20 people being killed at once is such an outlier it counts as a massacre.) that happened just today, and felt sad of course, because no one has the right to take another person's life and no one has the right to expect that that could happen to them, and of course I want a solution. I saw a friend on facebook saying we should not politicize the issue, which struck me as funny, and I wondered, what are the leading causes of death in America? Another acquaintance posted a quote claiming that we don't need to ban guns but just need to pray and turn to God. This was from a father of a son who was killed at Columbine, and can be read here: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bldarrellscott.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf gives data for the deaths of Americans 2009, the top Google result.

12 of which are related to health care (heart disease and cancer are the top two), accidents comes in number five, suicide is comes in number 10 (which could be argued is a health care issue when it comes to mental health),  and assault is number 15 with almost 17,000 deaths, drugs also made the list (but for some reason aren't listed in the top 15) with almost 40,000 deaths in 2009. Almost 25,000 people had alcohol as part of the problem for their death in 2009. The top causes of death related to health care totaled over half of all deaths.

Now, the most obvious solution to bring down our death rate would first be to use universal single-payer health care and finance health research to decrease the death rate among the 12 health-care related causes of death, and this is what liberal Democrats (not the centrist leadership, but real left-of-center people like my self) have been pushing for 80 years to do and the Republicans and DINOs will do everything in their power to stop.

Suicide is a health care issue, and the best solution would be to provide the mental health services necessary for people to go back to being productive happy members of society. It is the greater good.

Compared to other developed nations, the United States is not an outlier in the death rate category, but we can still do better. (I compared our death rate and median age to countries in Europe and we are not doing badly compared to them, we're actually doing a little better, but we can still do better. We should be the best.)

The three worst school shootings of all history (as of today) have all been American, and they all involved guns, the worst involved an automatic rifle. Shootings are the one category where a lot of progress can easily be made. The victims are always innocent and we have a duty as a people to do whatever we can to protect those who are most vulnerable, our children.

There is no reason that in the United States people should have any reason to fear going outside, going to the store, or going to school. If there are background checks for welfare there should be background checks and licenses required to buy guns. The constitution states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." and we are not following the first part, because we are not safe when people can get guns at gun shows without identification. Who knows who is getting them, murderers? Rapists? Drug Dealers? Almost certainly. There need to be protocols that prevent people from getting guns that will probably use them inappropriately, and if there is going to be a gun show everyone admitted needs to have a license to have a gun, you would never sell a car to someone without a license and insurance policy, and the same should be for guns.

I do not support banning all guns and weapons. Some people carry pepper spray with them for defense, I have friends and family that do this and I have comfort knowing that they will not be attacked. For people who are smaller, especially young small pretty women, carrying pepper spray is a good defense if the woman is attacked. However, it is not acceptable that large guns can be easily acquired. Arizona is a massive gun dealer point and the reason Fast and Furious was done in Arizona was to track the purchases of cartels in Arizona. To have no regulation of guns clearly brings anarchy because those who are unscrupulous in nature and dangerous will buy the most powerful guns that puts everyone at risk. This is not appropriate or acceptable for any civilized nation. It risks lives. However, I do understand why having guns available can be a good thing. Our founding fathers gave many good reasons why people should have guns. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

One only has to look at the gun violence in this country to see what the cost of this "freedom" is. I just want to point out that the party that is so supportive of this "freedom" to own guns passed and still support restrictions on the freedom of speech to "protect" people. Words have never killed people. Words are blunt, they can only cause damage through action. However, a gun is a weapon, a gun can kill people and a gun can kill innocent children like happened this past week in Connecticut. There is absolutely no reason people in a civilized nation should ever have the reasonable expectation that they might be shot by a mentally disturbed person in a school in any free nation, and there is a reasonable expectation that could happen right now, right here in the United States.

We need a balanced approach. To own a car (which has a useful purpose) requires a license, because if driven dangerously can cause damage and needs education to know how to use. Should we ban cars because it is one of the leading causes of death? No, of course not. Cars are useful and as long as our mass transit system in this country is weak we will need them. Guns are the same story. There are only three reasons to own a gun, to hunt for food, to defend oneself by injuring another being, or to kill another being. That is all guns can do. You can not get to work with a gun. You can only kill or injure another being. With such a powerful weapon it is prudent that we protect ourselves from the mentally ill and instate laws so that they can not hurt others. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our children, we owe it to our country. Guns can be useful, if you are camping in the woods for a long time they can provide food, or if you just enjoy hunting. But with their use comes a massive dark side which must be contained, that of death if used by the wrong person. There is some truth to the saying that guns don't kill people, people do. So we need to make sure that in order to have a gun you must be deemed sane. My only proposition is that the requirements to own a gun should be no more lax than the requirements to own a car, as they currently are, f you don't know how to use it and you are not deemed sane by the licensing through a background check you have no right to own one because the need (of safety) of the many will always outweigh the desire (to own an item) of the one.

It comes down to the old debate regarding guns of freedom vs. safety. Is it more important to be able to own a gun, or is it more important to be safe from the mentally disturbed who currently can get hold of guns? That is our choice. A balanced approach can fulfill this.

The other opinion, that the problem is in our hearts, has some truth to it, however, we will never be able to make everyone safe to hold a gun as not regulating guns like cars has shown. We can pray as much as we want, these children will not come back to life. We can pray as much as we want and the evil and crazy people in this country who currently have access to guns will not listen. They don't care how much you pray to your God, they will continue to murder. Sorry, that's life. The current movement to legalize concealed weapons for people who have permits (which is the way it is going, as can be seen in Michigan http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2012/12/sweeping_changes_in_michigans.html) is the wrong direction and bad for America, we need to protect our children, our seniors, our weakest, and if you are a Christian (as 70% of Americans are), I recommend you read the Four Gospels again because I just finished them and that message to take care of your weakest was one of the most clear. Jesus never condemned gays, (which many seem to believe) but he was extremely clear that we are supposed to take care of our weakest. We have failed America. 27 dead bodies from gun violence, 20 of them children, counts as a failure to protect our most vulnerable in the one place they should be 100% confident that they should be safe, which is school. By allowing people to carry concealed weapons, there is no where in America where anyone can reasonably feel safe. Sorry that is my opinion on the common belief that guns make people safe, because 20 dead children being shot in their classroom sure doesn't make me feel very safe! It is a cultural failure. Britain when they had one massacre when only 17 deaths (ten fewer than the one that happened Friday) back in 1996 increased restrictions on guns and that is still their worst record. We have had two that have exceeded that body count since 1996, Virginia Tech and the massacre on Friday. This cannot be considered a success, the only thing this can be considered is a complete utter failure of our government to protect its people and a failure of the American people to protect their weakest.

But in the end, this entire debate comes down to a very simple debate between two values, individual liberty vs. communal safety. I choose communal safety. The needs of the many will always outweigh the desire of the one.

A summary of issues everyone in America can agree on

In this era of absolute political discord, we should not forget there are still a few issues that most Americans (and, frankly, most people in the world) regardless of political sway can agree on:

• North Korea is a dangerous country that needs to be countered so that they can be reunified with South Korea. Foreigners have a responsibility to move the world to a point so the concentration camps can be closed.
• China needs democracy.
• Women's rights in the Middle East need to improve.
• Turkey is a valuable ally to all freedom loving people.
• There have been no wars in the European Union since its foundation.
• Good things are happening in Scandinavia, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
• The drug war has caused too much violence in Latin America. A solution is needed. (even though we might disagree on what should be done)
• The budget should be balanced, though this is one of the most contentious subjects.
• When surveyed, most Americans agree that we should have a more equal distribution of wealth and most don't fully comprehend the difference between the super rich and super poor. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/08/inequality
• Most Americans want at least a public option for health insurance. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/12/03/healthcare-usa-poll-idUSN0210977220091203
• Most Americans want less foreign involvement in the Middle East. Except big oil. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/25/nation/la-na-foreign-policy-isolation-20121025

We aren't as divided as we think we are

The Non-Political, Biological, Constitutional, and Economical Argument for Universal Health Care

As a scientist with a grasp of basic economic principles, I am in favor of universal health care. There is a clear correlation between access to health care and overall health. In Northern Australia you are in the humid tropics and everyone is healthy for the most part. Go to the same latitude in Africa and you lose all the health care Australians have and people's livelihoods decrease greatly. This is both a cause and an effect that keeps people not working and lowers life expectancy. I am going to prove the following, 1. Why Health Care is a Public Good, 2. Why Health Care is a prerequisite to a all around high standard of living, 3. Why Health Care is a human right and every member of society needs to have access, and 4. Why Health Care can only be fully implemented with Governmental Intervention.

1. Why Health Care is a Public Good
To define public good, a public good is in this tense is "non-rival – one person consuming them does not stop another person consuming them;" It is non rival because people are only going to have the amount of health care that they require,  there are enough resources to provide for, and over-treatment is not a major concern. Because who actually enjoys going to the doctor?

Furthermore, because of Germ theory, when someone is sick in the middle of a large crowd the bacteria and viruses that the person is infected with spread to other people. If we have one person in society carrying a virus that people are not immune to, and other people get the virus, we are risking an outbreak. In the United States of America, to allow someone to put other people at risk of contagious diseases, especially susceptible people's health violates a core American value, the right to life without which all other rights are pointless. (Declaration of Independence Paragraph II) This is proof that our founding father's would agree that we need to protect all people from things outside of their control. It is more dangerous than drugs because life-threatening heroin doesn't spread like wildfire, viruses do. Another thing, many people continue to go to work after they get sick and don't stay home and take medicine allowing them to get better here in America. Because of this, no matter what the official rates are for illness, they are going to be too low because Americans are not taught Germ Theory. This makes American statistics for illness the minimum because the actual numbers are much higher. Also, economically, when you are sick if you go to work your efficiency is going to be cut significantly because it is harder to do tasks. /This means that true universal health care is economical stimulation.

This proves that someone's not getting health care harms everyone else's health care, no matter what their income level, race, sex, or social class is, making someone not have access to health care inherently immoral.

2. Why Health Care is a Prerequisite to a Standard of Living.
If you are sickly, your standard of living is going to drop. Economically, you are going to be less productive, even if you are going to work. You will not be able to get things done that have to be done and if your illness is contagious the standard of living of people around you is also going to drop. If you look at the standard of living on the Human Development Index, the lowest countries have sporadic health care services at best, and the countries at the very top of the list all have Universal Health Care. If someone is not sick, and not around people who are sick, than the illness will drop and people will lead better lives.

3. Why Health Care is a Human Right and Every Member of Society Needs to Have Access.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by Eleanor Roosevelt and others, lists fundamental human rights that are followed by all free nations. It is based on equality and includes parts of life that are not taken away from people in the United States of America, such as freedom of speech, religion, petition, and other rights. However, if you are dead, these rights are not worth anything. You need to be alive to enjoy these good concepts, and if a person doesn't have access to health care they are unable to enjoy every human right. This makes is a foundation for everything we do in life in our world and a prerequisite to everything in society.

4. Why Health Care Can Only be Fully Implemented with Governmental Intervention.
The first thing people learn about corporations in any economics class is what firms exist to do. They exist to make a profit. People go into business to make money and only a few major businessmen continue to care about what happens to others. The owner is in business to make money to live his/her own life. (Mankiw) This makes it so that if it is not profitable to give someone health care a corporation is not going to. This means that if ordinary people do not have health insurance or have their health care paid for by taxes (like Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Japan and Taiwan to an extent) they will not receive health care, making it so that you have a large segment of the population that will not have access, giving a huge pool of people for disease to grow and mutate in, threatening an epidemic.

An option for people to have their health care, the current American  method, is to have health insurance industries offer people insurance. If there are competing companies the prices are going to stay low and the people at the top will make money and everyone will be happy. This should work, but often doesn't. Companies often out compete each other forcing out the competition and then rise their prices giving their owners record profits leaving people who don't qualify for Medicare struggling to make ends meet (dropping standards of living for no moral reason) OR going without health care (which as I proved in point 3 doesn't just affect the people without coverage). Both are unacceptable and not the fault of the people who are now at risk. This is why if we are to do the American option, there will need to be a governmental self-sustaining public health insurance option for people to buy into if they choose to. This will prevent large corporations from taking advantage of innocent people and to not do so goes against the fundamental American principle our Founding Fathers believed in, that all people are created equal and we all have a right to life. This would work.

Another option is universal health care from the government. People pay sales taxes, and then everyone has paid for their use of the public good. It prevents outbreaks in Northern Europe and Canada making their standard of living exceed ours by international standards, and follows the American principle of everyone being equal. Like anything, there is an equilibrium that must be achieved in order for it to work, which is why when I talked to a friend from British Columbia he told me about how there was reform to their system around 2006 that took the existing system and crossed out the problems of long waiting lines that had been an unexpected symptom during PM Trudeau's term. They fixed it and it is now far superior to America's system using cost-benefit analysis.

I am not a Capitalist. I am not a Communist. I am not a Socialist. I am a Utilitarian. I look at the options to find the system that will work the best for the largest amount of people and then support it after analysis.

Why we need to crack down on the drug trade

We need to crack down on the drug trade in our schools. They ruin thousands of people's lives year after year and makes it so that we lose valuable workers of our economy. It wastes America's money year after year and sends money to drug dealers so they can send more drugs up here. This hurts us deeply and it is becoming obvious something has to be done. I think that prohibition on the less dangerous drugs should be revoked. This is why:

1. Prohibition made illegal consumption of alcohol skyrocket and we spent millions trying to stop it. Consumption didn't stop.
2. Smoking. We have smoking legal if you are over 21 and you can only do it in certain places. If smoking were illegal than a lot more people would smoke because there would be no regulation and it would add to the cartel's profits. By making it illegal it makes it so teenagers have a harder time getting it. If it was illegal, that would not be true.
3. If we allow authorized sellers to sell the drugs and taxed them the taxes could go immediately to rehab. People would be paying for their rehabilitation when they use it which would benefit all Americans. They are taking the drugs anyways, so if they were made legal and regulated consumption will drop. It will lose popularity with people who use them to be bad, and our prisons would have fewer people. That will benefit everybody. The drug cartels will lose power and the violence in Mexico will subside saving millions of lives.
1. Proof: Canada has legalized marijuana and other less harmful drugs bringing the illegal drug trade there down. Unfortunately, they don't have enough people to make a big enough dent on the world market. We do and we must.

The drug I would look at deregulating is

• Cannabis, which is useful in medicine.

Another thing, besides that the way we need to do it is by fighting the use in high schools, because that is probably their biggest market. That could save thousands of lives and keep billions from the cartels. That needs to be regulated to save lives.

On the Health Care Bill.

Here are the facts. If the bill works as it is supposed to it could reduce the cost of medicine the federal government has to spend greatly. If everyone had health insurance, like people in Washington need car insurance, than tax payers won't ever need to cover these people again and they will be less of a drain on tax payer's dollars. 1/4 dollars spent by the Federal government in FY 2000- FY 2007 was spent on health care. source: http://www.usaspending.gov/source if we bring down the cost of health care by requiring people to be fiscally prepared for health visits, the Federal deficit could be eliminated while decreasing taxes for ALL AMERICANS. If we did this than the national debt will decrease to nothing and another major drain on America's fiscal resources could be eliminated reducing taxes EVEN FURTHER.

That is what we must do if we are to continue to function as a stable society. However, there is one issue that disturbs me during the passage of this bill.

The Republican Party is living in the past. They are afraid of big government, but more than that, they are afraid of Socializing things. It doesn't matter how big the government is as long as it is organized to increase efficiency and takes care of the people that put them in office. Other free nations in Europe, Canada, and others socialize medicine which raises taxes, but eliminates the cost beyond that. There is a reason you don't have health insurance in Canada, it is because you don't need it. If there are problems with how quickly services are provided on a 20 year old system, it should be perfected, but that is their issue, not ours. Other nations nationalize things that help their people live not for power, but to improve their people's lives.
The fear of Socialization goes back to the most evil American who held office. A man who was so evil, that even though he was 1 out of 46 Senators, an entire era is named after him. Joseph McCarthy. We need to get past his dogmatic scare tactics and go forth onto a new era. To live in the past does not help anyone. We have no choice but to leave his ideas.

I am sure it will work and look forward to a day where the costs of government in that area are reduced so that we never have to borrow money ever again.

Originally written on December 24, 2009.