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CAT Tracks for September 9, 2009
ROCKY, ROCKY, ROCKY |
I've always tried to stay away from politics on CAT Tracks...
Did I see a roll of the eyes?
Hey...if you think about it, it's true.
Yes, I've lambasted George W. Bush and his education stooges for their war on public education...the infamous No Child Left Behind.
However, you have surely noticed that I've also lambasted Barack H. Obama and Arne Duncan for picking up the "standard" of the Bush Administration...dressing it in well-funded sheep's clothing.
Yes, that was "politics"...but politics as it directly related to education...politics that directly affected the working conditions of teachers everywhere, especially at a 100% Title I school district like Cairo.
Public education has not had a friend in the White House in a loooooong time.
No politics...
Oh, yeah...what about Sarah Palin?
Don't forget Sarah...
...as if she would let us!
Don't make me go there...
I'm always reporting news of the weird and wacky...like spit-brewed beer!
I am passing along the Op-Ed piece below because the columnist attacks everyone!
Oh, she's tougher on the past administration, but they earned it. They had eight loooooong years to write their legacy. To paraphrase the killer one-liner of their past champion..."Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?"
Got my fix of Rush Limbaugh today on the way to Paducah...about 30 minutes of water-boarding! He was railing against Obama...how he was a communist. (Okay, Rush didn't actually say Obama was a communist...just named a handful of other people that he did call communists...people whom President Obama has appointed as "Czars" so they wouldn't have to be approved by Congress. Rush did leave his listeners with the strong implication that "birds of a feather flock together".) Rush's punch line for today (and every day) was that the current economic crisis is all Obama's fault...brought on by his anti-free enterprise policies.
How soon he forgets...
I seem to remember comments that the economic crisis was the only reason a black man was able to get elected President of the United States (that and the fact that John McCain proved his instability by picking S...oops, I wasn't supposed to go there!)
Anyway, the columnist below is obviously frustrated...a feeling I share.
Our health care system is broken...it HAS to be fixed!
My frustration is that there has been little talk of curbing, reducing costs. The prices charged for simple things are outrageous. It's not too much of an exaggeration to talk about the $6 band-aid. I've seen some billings that if you did the math...
I'll share a personal example of health-care costs run amok!
In March 2006, my wife was diagnosed with colon cancer after being taken ill at a conference in Philadelphia. Julie was operated on and the tumor was successfully removed. We're talking "standard surgery"...surgery that has been included in the "skill set" for surgeons for decades. In other words, nothing experimental...nothing "cutting edge".
Julie was in the hospital for maybe a week. You want to guess what the final bill presented to the insurance company for payment was?
Go ahead...GUESS!
$10,000?
Okay...THAT is silly...waaaaaay to low! (If you "bought it", then you must be one of the lucky ones...young and healthy, with healthy immediate family members...no hospital "experience".)
How about $50,000?
I mean, THAT ought to buy somebody a real nice car...definitely not a clunker!
You have some tests...CT scan...MRI...maybe repeat both. Lie in a hospital bed in a room for two...not eating any food...placed on NPO. A bottle or two of some really nasty tasting shtuff...just in case you might have eaten something before you were admitted. A nurse that wanders through the room every hour or so and ignores your answer to his/her question of "Is there anything I can get you?" Some pain meds...if you are lucky...delivered an hour or two late. A couple of hours "on the table" while the surgeon practices his trade. A few days of "recovery"...lying in that same bed, being delivered food that you can't eat, and finally...release.
Hell, what more can you expect for $50,000???
Well, I'll tell you...don't!
Don't expect the "amenities" describe above for $50,000.
Try $350,000...
No, that was not an exaggeration...I didn't make that up. And, that was in 2006 dollars. They say health care costs go up about 12% a year. That would mean that a $350,000 operation would cost an additional $42,000 in 2007.
You figure another $42,000 in 2008? Nooooo!
You forgot about "compounding"...you gotta pay 12% of the $350,000 PLUS 12% of the $42,000...mere "chump change" of $5,040.
I belabor the point...it's insanity!
And, we aren't talking organ transplants here. We're talkin' simple surgery that has been performed, as I said, for DECADES!
Tell me the health care system ain't broke!!!
I don't have the answer...obviously no one else does either.
However, an answer must be found, or the current economic crisis will simply be a preview of coming attractions...
From the New York Times...
Op-Ed Columnist
Less Spocky, More Rocky
By MAUREEN DOWD
As soon as I started covering Barack Obama, I knew he was going to be trouble.
Not Global Trouble, like W. and Dick Cheney. Or Hanky-Panky Trouble, like Bill Clinton and John Edwards. Or Tedious Trouble, like John Kerry and Michael Dukakis.
He was going to be the kind of guy who whipped you up and then, when you were all excited, left you flat, and then, when you were deflated and exasperated and time was running out, ensorcelled you again with some sparkly fairy dust.
It’s an irritating pattern. Not as puerile as Bill Clinton’s pattern of wasting time and plunging into personal chaos, or as horrifying as Dick Cheney’s routine of bullying and cutting paper dolls out of the Constitution.
But not as reliably uplifting as Jed Bartlet either.
After keeping his great powers of persuasion and elucidation under wraps all summer, the president at long last comes forward to explain his health care plan to an utterly confused and increasingly skeptical and wary public.
He should have done this speech back in June and conjured up a better glossary. You can’t combat a scintillating term like “death panels” with a somnambulant one like “public option.”
President Obama is so wrapped up in his desire to be a different, more conciliatory, beer-summit kind of leader, he ignores some verities.
Sometimes, when you’ve got the mojo, you have to keep your foot on your opponent’s neck. When you’re trying to get a Sisyphean agenda passed, it’s good if people in the way — including rebellious elements in your own party — fear you.
Civil discourse is fine, but when the other side is fighting dirty, you should get angry. Don’t let the bully kick sand in your face. The White House should have impaled death panel malarkey as soon as it came up.
By the time the president got feisty in a speech on Monday, the inmates had taken over cable TV, much like the spooky spirits swarming up over Bald Mountain in “Fantasia.”
Even Steve Hildebrand, the strategist who helped shape Obama’s historic win in the Iowa caucuses, complains that his former hero “needs to be more bold in his leadership.” Disenchanted at Obama’s disengaged approach on health care and gay rights, Hildebrand told Politico’s Ben Smith that he was “losing patience.”
It was one thing for Obama to delegate freely when he was on the Harvard Law Review, but it’s madness to go play golf and delegate freely to Congress, letting Nancy Pelosi make your case. After signaling that there was nothing he’d fall on his sword for on health care; after dropping Van Jones at the first objection from Glenn Beck — a demagoon who called Obama a “racist” — the president is getting to be seen as an easy mark.
If Obama didn’t have a knife-thrower like Rahmbo in the Oval, Democrats would be totally convinced that the president would fold in a heartbeat.
In the absence of more vivid presidential leadership, the Democrats have reverted to their old DNA — self-destructive scrapping and spending. And the Republicans are sticking to theirs — being mean-spirited and shameless, attacking big government spending while taking no blame for their own.
Just as he let Hillary breathe new life into her faltering campaign in New Hampshire, Obama let the moribund Republicans revivify themselves in the slashing image of Limbaugh and Palin. Administration officials have been chortling that Republicans overreached in criticizing the president for giving a speech urging kids to study hard, write their own destiny and wash their hands.
It’s true that Republicans who objected looked risible. On MSNBC, Joe Watkins, a G.O.P. strategist, explained the perils of letting “one of the most gifted speakers that the world has ever seen” speak to impressionable children.
What if next time, he asked, the president made a strong argument to kids about the Defense of Marriage Act? “What if,” he wondered, “kids come back home and say to their mom and dad, when the president who they like and who they agree with, tells them marriage is not necessarily between a man and a woman?”
But if such Republicans seem loco, and the far left looks easily outmaneuvered, the president seems lame, too, for letting the crazies and uglies get on offense all summer, showcased by a superficial media beast. Laura Bush had to ride to Obama’s rescue and explain that he wasn’t a brain-washing alien, that it was a good thing for a president to inspire kids.
It shouldn’t take a superhuman effort by the Democrats, with an assist from a Republican former first lady, to beat back the most obviously nutty, stupid things that Republicans say.
The president told students on Tuesday that “being successful is hard” and “you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.”
He should take his own words to heart. He can live long and prosper by being less Spocky and more Rocky.
WASHINGTON
