This week Americans bid a sad farewell to one of the most popular government programs ever. More than 600,000 worn out old wrecks were traded in for sleek new fuel-efficient cars under the “Cash for Clunkers” program in less than a month. At the end of the day, close to $3 billion dollars of our tax money will have been spent to help people buy new cars and pump new life into the beleaguered automotive industry.
Cash for Clunkers may have ended, but the government is not finished helping us upgrade our lives just yet. Now Uncle Sam wants to pay you to replace your major appliances with newer, more energy-efficient models. You may be able to get a voucher for anywhere from $50 to $200 towards the purchase of a new refrigerator or washing machine if you qualify. Is this not the greatest government in the history of governments?
I feel like a kid at Christmas, wondering what Uncle Sam is going to leave under the tree for me next. We can only hope that the largesse doesn’t stop with automobiles and washing machines. We have an opportunity here to help Americans remake their lives in every conceivable fashion, and it is obvious that money is no object here.
Here are just a few of my suggestions for future “Cash for…”exchange programs.
- Cash for Old Houses. I’d be shocked if this one isn’t already at least in the planning stages because it just makes too much sense. Take a depressed housing industry, stir in millions of Americans living in run-down old homes, and season with an unlimited supply of deficit spending. That gives you the perfect recipe for a massive new spending program to help people purchase new homes. Sure the costs would be astronomical. So what’s your point?
- Cash for Old Spouses. Few things would upgrade the quality of life for many Americans than to trade in their tired old husband or wife for a newer, more efficient model. To qualify you would have to have been married for at least 20 years and your spouse would have to be at least 55 years old. Your replacement would have to be under 35, have a good job, and leave a relatively small carbon footprint. Uncle Sam won’t find a replacement for you, but he will give you a voucher for up to $10K a year to keep your May-December romance in bloom. I’m not going to speculate as to what the government might do with your spousal trade-in, but Sarah Palin probably has an idea or two.
- Cash for Conservatives. If there is one thing holding us back from becoming a liberal utopia it is those busy-body conservatives with their annoying preference for smaller government and low taxes. It’s time to buy them out. For a one-time payment of $100K conservatives would have to agree to do the following for the next four years: vote a straight Democratic ticket every election, abstain from attending any town hall meetings or rallies on any courthouse steps, and have Fox News and conservative Internet blogs blocked from their homes.
If you’re thinking that it would be ridiculous to suggest that there would be any conservatives would sell out so easily, let me ask you a question. Do you think that all of the people who took advantage of Cash for Clunkers were big-government, tree-hugging liberals? Or do you think that more than a few right-wingers who rail against the “spread the wealth around” concept gladly took the $4500 credit for their old junkers because, well, it was just too good an opportunity to pass up?
As Alfred Adler said, it’s much easier to fight for your principles than it is to live up to them.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Are health care forum protests “un-American”?
So how is your summer going? Has it been too hot, too dry, too short, or otherwise failed to meet your expectations? If so, you can take heart in this one fact: at least you aren’t a sitting congressman who has to go back to his home district and hold a public forum on health care reform. I haven’t been to one myself, but from here it sure doesn’t look like they are having much fun.
You’ve probably heard that there have been some rather spirited protests at these forums. Democrats have accused right-wing special interest groups of organizing these raucous demonstrations and say they are preventing Americans from having a much-needed debate on the topic at hand. Republicans swear that these protests are a grass roots phenomenon and contend that they just show how upset ordinary Americans are with Obama’s attempt at a government takeover of the health care industry.
So are these protesters interfering with the Democratic process? Should the demonstrators politely wait their turn to speak at these forums and allow everyone to have their say rather than disrupting the proceedings with their screaming and shouting? And is it bad form to hang your local congressperson in effigy?
In the past, my answer to all three of these questions would have been yes. But there has been so much nonsense going on for so long in Washington DC that I’m afraid my answers now might be “yes”, “no”, and “you’re lucky you’re only being hung in effigy, pal.”
Ordinarily I’m a non-partisan, even keel sort of a person who sees a certain amount of merit in both sides of a good argument and I like for everyone to have their say. But it seems like things have been going so wrong for so long in our country that now I’m not so sure that polite debate is getting us anywhere good.
Unsurprisingly, Nancy Pelosi and I disagree on this. In a recent op-ed piece she authored with fellow Democrat Steny Hoyer, she said that “drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” I’m not sure what universe she’s been living, but in my experience drowning out opposing views is pretty much the way politicians have been advancing their agendas for as long as I can remember.
More humorous (or more perhaps more disturbing) was this statement from the Pelosi/Hoyer piece. Once their health care reform passes, they contend that “never again will medical bills drive Americans into bankruptcy; never again will Americans be in danger of losing coverage if they lose their jobs or if they become sick; never again will insurance companies be allowed to deny patients coverage because of pre-existing conditions.”
Do you hear that? “Never again” will any of the bad things that now happen to sick people in our imperfect health care system happen again, ever! Barak Obama and Nancy Pelosi are going to solve these problems for everyone, for all time!
I don’t think so, Nancy. What you are almost certain to do is raise my taxes and make the system much less effective for the majority of us who already have employer-provided health insurance that works pretty well, most of the time. Just because something isn’t perfect doesn’t mean that changing it will make it better. And looking at Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA hospital situation, I don’t see any reason for us to have confidence that the federal government is going to “fix” the health care system. Not in a good way, anyhow.
Maybe these health care forum protests are interfering with the democratic process, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. That process, as it exists right now, doesn’t see
You’ve probably heard that there have been some rather spirited protests at these forums. Democrats have accused right-wing special interest groups of organizing these raucous demonstrations and say they are preventing Americans from having a much-needed debate on the topic at hand. Republicans swear that these protests are a grass roots phenomenon and contend that they just show how upset ordinary Americans are with Obama’s attempt at a government takeover of the health care industry.
So are these protesters interfering with the Democratic process? Should the demonstrators politely wait their turn to speak at these forums and allow everyone to have their say rather than disrupting the proceedings with their screaming and shouting? And is it bad form to hang your local congressperson in effigy?
In the past, my answer to all three of these questions would have been yes. But there has been so much nonsense going on for so long in Washington DC that I’m afraid my answers now might be “yes”, “no”, and “you’re lucky you’re only being hung in effigy, pal.”
Ordinarily I’m a non-partisan, even keel sort of a person who sees a certain amount of merit in both sides of a good argument and I like for everyone to have their say. But it seems like things have been going so wrong for so long in our country that now I’m not so sure that polite debate is getting us anywhere good.
Unsurprisingly, Nancy Pelosi and I disagree on this. In a recent op-ed piece she authored with fellow Democrat Steny Hoyer, she said that “drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.” I’m not sure what universe she’s been living, but in my experience drowning out opposing views is pretty much the way politicians have been advancing their agendas for as long as I can remember.
More humorous (or more perhaps more disturbing) was this statement from the Pelosi/Hoyer piece. Once their health care reform passes, they contend that “never again will medical bills drive Americans into bankruptcy; never again will Americans be in danger of losing coverage if they lose their jobs or if they become sick; never again will insurance companies be allowed to deny patients coverage because of pre-existing conditions.”
Do you hear that? “Never again” will any of the bad things that now happen to sick people in our imperfect health care system happen again, ever! Barak Obama and Nancy Pelosi are going to solve these problems for everyone, for all time!
I don’t think so, Nancy. What you are almost certain to do is raise my taxes and make the system much less effective for the majority of us who already have employer-provided health insurance that works pretty well, most of the time. Just because something isn’t perfect doesn’t mean that changing it will make it better. And looking at Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA hospital situation, I don’t see any reason for us to have confidence that the federal government is going to “fix” the health care system. Not in a good way, anyhow.
Maybe these health care forum protests are interfering with the democratic process, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. That process, as it exists right now, doesn’t see
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