“Personally, I’d like to see government so small that nobody would notice if it went on holiday for a month. You can’t do that while the entire career structure of journalists and politicians depends on them expanding the scope of politics more and more.”
That sounds like change I could believe in.
Right wing hate mob at a Texas healthcare town hall. I went to a Tea Party in Gilbert on July 4th and it was about like the hate mob in the video.
I was watching some guy at one of the recent town halls ask President O how he was planning on paying for the healthcare plans. O talked about all the savings that could be found by cleaning up the way things are done and then the last third of the money came down to increasing the taxes of those deadbeat rich guys who make over $250,000 a year. He even volunteered his piece of the pie. It sounded so … reasonable … except when you try to think of any huge government undertaking that has ever run on budget, or even close. Let’s see, we have Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, the prescription drug benefit, the military budget, Afghanistan, Iraq, among a few off the top of my head. And then the other day O contrasted UPS and FedEx with the USPS.
"UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It's the Post Office that's always having problems."
Holy cow!
You know, there are things that could be fixed with health care like portability. There is no reason that health insurance should be tied to a job, just make COBRA last indefinitely. In other words, if you have coverage in a group there is no reason that you should have to drop your insurance just because you change or lose a job. Insurance should be able to be bought across state lines. There need to be limits on lawsuits. Krauthammer has some good ideas as do others.
What has to end is the idea that healthcare is a right that the government should provide. I mean really, where will it end? gas for your car, food on your table, a table, a house, a college education, a high-paying job, a good looking wife …. I mean really, where will it end?
That was the headline in this AP story, followed by:
“The Labor Department's report Friday showed that the unemployment rate dropped a notch to 9.4 percent in July, from 9.5 percent the previous month. Together with slight increases in the average workweek and wages, the new figures suggested the economy is in a transition from recession to recovery.“
Unfortunately if you read down a bit there are these little nuggets:
“If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included the unemployment rate would have been 16.3 percent in July. All told, 14.5 million were out of work in July.
Job-seekers are finding it harder to get work because there are so few openings. A record 4.97 million people had been unemployed six months or longer in July. And the average length of unemployment grew to 25.1 weeks, also a record.”
So: “A net total of 247,000 jobs were lost last month, the fewest in a year and a drastic improvement from the 443,000 that vanished in June.”
We lose a quarter million jobs, which is going backwards isn’t it? And that is good because the ship is sinking slower? And a lot of people have just given up looking so they don’t count in the 9.4%? I’m not understanding what strong data is referred to in the headline.
What would the headline have been if George Bush were still President?
