If We Did This, We’d Be Fired.

I want to ask any of you out there to please explain to me why we allow members of the U. S. House Of Representatives to sit on committees that oversee the same industries from which they take millions in political donations?

The new Tea/GOP coalition in the House have staffed their business and finance committees with folks taken right out of the business and finance industry. These committees are poised to deregulate companies that were just regulated by recent FDA/EPA/Banking legislation. The Tea/GOP controlled House has already voted to repeal the Health Care Law.

I understand that, to business folks, making extra money for rich stockholders trumps safe food, drinkable water, and…obeying the law. I also understand that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and various other multinational conglomerates have invested heavily in the last election and expect a proper return from the politicians whom that have purchased. But, how many of us regular Joes and Josephines could get away with these  kinds of shenanigans without losing our jobs?

One of the things that I do is practice law. I can already hear some of you saying “lawyers are nothing but liars!” My response is that the anecdotes that make the news, do not statistically correlate with the actual facts. Okay, the law profession has more buttholios per square inch than all others…except for doctors. But you would not believe the endless rules and regulations that the Colorado Supreme Court makes us follow. There is a whole agency, The Office of Attorney Regulation is dedicated to make the legal community mind their p’s and q’s, and they do a great job of it. No, they cannot prevent a lawyer from being a rude, obnoxious jerk, but, among other things, they routinely yank the license of any attorney who, within the purview of their representation, knowingly becomes involved in a conflict of interest.

Let’s say I was to represent a guy who was charged with murder and the main witness for the prosecution is another client of mine. It happens more often than you might think. How am I supposed to zealously represent my murder client, when I have to use the dirt  I know from previous confidential communications with my other client/witness to cross examine him on the stand? The answer is I can’t, no way. Nyet. I am not allowed to just not use the dirt against the one client/witness, because that would hurt my murder client, and I am prohibited from hurting the client/witness, in any event. It doesn’t matter which client is paying me more, or which client I like better, or even if one client is my best buddy. Rules is rules, and even the appearance of impropriety in this area may be enough to bounce me off of the new case.

And I agree with these rules.  To me, it is the ultimate in sleazedom to perpetuate the pretense. Lawyers who think that they are above the rules of conduct are the ones who deserve to lose their licenses, and you have my full permission to despise them. Colorado alone has more lawyers than the whole country of China. My new client will just have to find someone else who can ethically represent him. There are similar provisions for civil practice as well.

Now let’s talk about the U. S. House of Representatives:

1. The big health care conglomerates gave $5 million to GOP leaders over the last two years. The same GOP that was trying to block any health care reform, and the same GOP that just voted to repeal it with nothing to replace it.. It gets worse.

2. $2 million of that payola went to the recently elected Speaker of the House, John Boehner, R-Ohio. Yeah, he’s the same guy who has been yammering ad nauseam about how the health care reform law is so bad, cause it kills jobs, and is a gummint take over and is socialism and has death panels and is somehow more bureaucratic than the private companies already are. None of that is actual fact, but the language closely tracks those of his big money contributors. Oh, but there’s more!

3. The new House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, R-VA., comes from the finance, insurance, and real estate industries. He is the second most powerful person in the House. He got over $5.6 million from corporate donors, including $2.4 million from the same finance, insurance, and real estate industry, he used to work for. He’s leading the charge to repeal the recent regulations enacted into law after his buddies almost toppled the world economy.

4. More $millions went to key finance-related committee members, including Ways and Means Chair, David Camp R-Mich., and Appropriations Committee Chair, Hal Rogers, R-Ky.

5. Financial Services Committee Chair, Spencer Bachus, R-Alabama, got $1.2 million from the banking industry. He comes from the banking sector. He’s the guy who will sit on the committee to undo the banking reform legislation previously discussed.

6. Fred Upton, R-Michigan., Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, got $400,000, from, you guessed it, the energy and mining industry. He comes from the energy and mining industries. If you are worried about uranium tailings in your water, or another BP disaster, or your kids getting skin cancer from the effects of climate change, rest assured that Upton wants to roll back the new greenhouse-gas regulations, because his big political contributors find them inconvenient.

7. The Chair of the Agriculture Committee, Frank Lucas, R-Okla., got more than $600,000 from the agribusiness lobby. He will be spearheading a repeal of those pesky new FDA rules that keep the rest of us from being poisoned by tainted food, prepared under unsanitary conditions. Bad for business.

8. Chair of the Armed Services Committee,  Howard ”Buck” McKeon, R-California., the guy who is opposing cuts to the military budget, got half of his entire campaign contributions from the defense industry.

9. Budget Committee Chair, Paul Ryan, R- Wis., got $1.4 million from banks, hedge funds, investment houses and other financial services companies. He comes from the Banking, Hedge Fund, Investment Houses, and Financial Services industries.

And these are just the ones who would return the phone calls to the AP reporter, Charles Dharapak, whose data I stole to write this post.

Why are these not prohibited conflicts of interest? Is there not a set of House Rules, that prevent corporations from buying the politicians who oversee their operations? If there are rules, why aren’t they working? Why is this not just plain illegal? What makes politicians more privileged than the rest of us? Bottom line is, how can they be allowed to represent the interests of only the handful of constituents who gave them millions, and then thumb their noses at the rest of us who elected them? Because we let them, that’s how.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Some Bullies Never Grow Up

I was lucky enough to get one sentence printed in last Saturday’s Denver Post. It read exactly like this:

“On Wednesday evening, while almost the whole country was watching the memorial services from Tucson , the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, who had been offered a seat on Air Force One to attend the service, decided to attend a Republican fundraiser instead.”

What I said was a fact, pure and simple. One could argue that it was a good decision or not.  I submitted that one sentence, and let the reader decide. A letter in response, printed in today’s Post, characterized the decisions of  both President Obama, to accept the invitation to speak at the memorial, and of Speaker Boehner, to attend a political function elsewhere as personal decisions and therefore inappropriate for scrutiny.

I could not disagree more. I believe that elected officials like the President, as well as those on the short list for presidential succession like Mr. Boehner, are public figures.  This memorial was anything but private. The whole world was watching. The President did his job to stand in for all of us and represent how much we cared and what was good and right about this country. I believe he did just that and in a spectacular fashion. Several times, I was moved to tears. Most of the country appears to agree with me. Mr. Boehner’s decision to stay back and pander to the corporations that bought him new members of congress was not a private decision, but was a calculated political decision, designed to both de-legitimize the President and to dance with the date that brung him. Calling this a personal decision is like saying that the recent GOP vote to repeal the Health Care Law was just a bunch of personal decisions, made individually by each Tea/GOP politician who just happened to have all voted lock-step against the President on every piece of major legislation for the last two years. Any way, my little sentence is what it is.

Yesterday, after I had put my post on Bullying to bed, I received my first type-written hate letter, delivered, via mail, directly to my door. There was no return address and the signature was scribbled, so as to be basically illegible. This is the exact text of this letter:

“Dear Julian,

 The Speaker didn’t attend because there was no reason to attend a campaign rally for a lame duck president. You really need to stick to defending shoplifters and forget your monthly letter to the editor.”

The scribbled signature might have been H. Morales Jr., but this was probably a “nom de plume.”

When I got to thinking about it, I realized that this ignorant, frightened, angry, sick man had gone to a lot of trouble to access a data base in order to invade my privacy at home, and to let me know, in that all-too-typical cowardly, reactionary, psycho, Vito Corleone-type code, that he was ordering me to stop speaking out, otherwise he knew where I lived.

I found it so poignant, so fraught with irony, that yet another bully had found me just after I posted a personal experience about being victimized by bullies as a child.

But, as an adult, I see things differently:

1.      Anyone who yammers in public about a controversial subject has got to expect a response. I am no exception. There are no victims after a fair exchange of ideas, and anyone who feels victimized because their point is later proved invalid, should either consider another point of view or get out of the discussion.

My friend Dano tells me that a bit of tit for tat comes with the territory and he is right to a point. The problem is, sooner or later, that could very well be the excuse that you give to the judge at your sentencing hearing. There are rules regarding political discourse. It may not seem like it these days, but there are. I make my point, then you make yours. There are also laws regarding criminal conduct. There are many ways that you could have responded to my one sentence without invading the privacy of my home, attempting extortion, and violating my Constitutional right to speak freely. Your response to my sentence was overshadowed by your effort to terrorize me into silence. I understand that you feel your own voice has been muted by insidious, yet pervasive forces. I understand paranoia. In my career I have represented way sicker folks than you.

2.      I’m not tiny anymore. You can’t sit on me. To me, you are as light as a feather. I put in 22 years as a trial attorney in the trenches of the criminal justice system, and I no longer respond in fear to threats from pencil-weenies like you. I am sure that you are heavily armed, as part of a plethora of misguided and obviously futile efforts to keep your unseen demons at bay. I am armed with the truth and the law, and I hope to meet you face to face some day. Next time, you might want to include a return address. I’ll get back with you. I promise.

3.      If you actually knew me, you would know that I became a public defender so that I could stand up for the truly tiny guys like you, who were sat upon and squashed by that thirteen-hundred-pound gorilla, that oxymoron, we call criminal justice. In those 22 years, I saw the politics of prosecution at its best and at its worst. My clients were persecuted by politically motivated prosecutors more times than I would care to count, yet I also saw heinous cases plea bargained so that the prosecutor could go on vacation. I caught cops lying and cheating and manufacturing inculpatory evidence and destroying exculpatory evidence, just so they could win. I was compelled to cross-examine many “expert witnesses” as they attempted to pass off goofy, discredited, junk-science, on the witness stand. I was fortunate in my career to have stopped that gorilla from pounding guys like you to mulch, many, many more times than not. And I never ever gave up. I never will. And some day, when you go too far and get caught, (and you will) I really hope you find an attorney as dedicated as me. You are going to need one.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

A Story About Bullying

We came from back East in 1960. My dad’s federal government job had taken us from New York to Washington D.C. and even as far as Puerto Rico, but he had decided that we would settle down in the wild western town of Arvada, Colorado. And so, we bought into a brand new subdivision at

68^th Avenue

and

Brentwood Street

. There was nothing to the north of our little subdivision but rolling hills, fields, and fox farms for the next twenty miles. I guess it appeared idyllic to my parents.

They grew up during the Depression, in Brooklyn and Brownsville, respectively. We were first and second-generation southern Italian Americans. My dad served in WWII and went on to become a lawyer at twenty two. My mom earned her degree and was an English teacher at twenty. Our family looked, spoke, and acted quite differently from our Scotch/Irish/English/German/Swedish, etc. neighbors, who haled from locales such as Fort Smith, Kearney, and Kansas City.

The day we moved in, my brother, sister, and I were walking up “our block” when we were met by a gang of armed, very pale looking children, who not so subtlety indicated (the cracking of a bull whip is what I remember) that we “Spics” needed to find another neighborhood to infest. My sister, the oldest, was confused because, to her, “Spics” were Puerto Ricans and we were Italian. So, she asked them why they were calling us Spics. There response was that “a Spic is a Damned Mexican!.” As you might have guessed, things went downhill fast from there.

Entering Kindergarten (a nice Germanic name for nice Germanic children, only) was the beginning of a six-year nightmare for me. I was the tiniest kid in the school, distinctly Olive in complexion, and had just the faintest touch of a moustache on my upper lip. There were no blacks or Hispanics to speak of, and the only Italians were of the Northern third-generation variety, who were light complected and used red pepper, like we used basil and oregano. To my teachers, I spoke in tongues. They were ever vigilant to ferret out my method of cheating on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Not one teacher lifted a finger, or said one word to protect me when the boys repeatedly chanted, “When Dago flat, Dago, WOP, WOP, WOP!”

My dad reacted to my expressions of abject fear by telling me a story about how he had to fight five boys, one after the other, to earn the love of his mother…and a pair of roller skates. He was a Golden Gloves, Navy WWII hero, who, even before the war, had been shot, stabbed twice, and nearly lynched (Hey dat’s Frankie! He ain’t da guy! Take offadda rope!). He seemed nonplussed when I told him that I was so outweighed, that any pale-faced boy who had the notion could just sit on me and had indeed sat on me, and taunted me from atop and punched me and poked me with fingers and knuckles and pencils, and all I could do was cry or run. To dear old Dad, my only option was to stand and fight.

Not wanting to disappoint my dad, the hero,…I ran, (of course I ran! What am I, an idiot?) I got up an hour early, every morning and walked miles to school or to another bus stop, where “stomp the Guinea” was not the pre-boarding sport. I did this for years until the thugs, otherwise known as our neighbors, ran out of racial epithets. Besides, eventually I developed such speed and endurance that no one could catch me. They were huge, but tired easily. And you would be surprised how a little terror can give you that extra boost, until you can get in the door.

Eventually, the college vocabulary that drew so much suspicion at seven, became a hit at twelve. I began to be called “the brain” and with that small wedge, I managed to ingratiate myself into pale-faced society. I guess I was regarded as kind of like a mascot, or a novelty of sorts. It was years before I met an actual Hispanic and many more until I shook hands with a black man. For those years, I felt like the black man in the room.

To those other more legitimate minorities, I may seem to have been just another white boy. But I knew better. Even when my college application classified me as Caucasian, I knew better. I had been to the mountain, and I had seen the glory, and nobody could take that away from me. And even when the same boys who used to call me names and sit on me and torture me became my friends, I never forgot. You can never forget something like that. Ever.

I saw a story this morning about a grade school teacher, who decided to call the cops on one of her seven-year-old students, for allegedly uttering threatening words to other students. That she chose to seek a sheriff’s restraining order before going to the principal, or to the school counselor, or even to the parents of the student, I find interesting. Yet, each time I hear about another case of bullying, and the reaction thereto, I think about my own experience. And I’ll bet you think about yours. And maybe, after hearing about mine and thinking about yours, we can both think more about common sense and compassion, and less about fear and overreaction. There has got to be a better way.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Trouble On Easter Island

URGENT PRESS RELEASE   1/14/11

Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is a tiny island about 3,000 miles East of Chile. Thought you might want to expand your horizons a bit, as the U. S. news cycle today so far, is filled with material that will not become actual news until the end of the week.

Below is a copy of a letter I sent to the Editor of the Denver Post, just after the Chilean miners were rescued. The Post did not think it was on a subject they wanted to print, given how warm and fuzzy everybody was feeling toward Chile, even though both stories were unfolding simultaneously. 

I have friends, who are indigenous survivors on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The piece directly following my letter is a copy of the latest release from the island. I am not going to change the spelling, grammar, or syntax. My friends from the Hitorangi Clan have the same problems reading, writing, and speaking in five other languages as well. If you want to learn more about this situation, you are free to Google the issue. It might surprise you to learn just how long the international community has allowed these repeated human rights violations by the Chilean government to fly under the radar.

JBS

 10/12/2010

Our hearts go out to the miners and their families. The Chilean government spared no effort to keep the miners as safe and healthy as possible, during this months-long ordeal and are to be commended.  This, appears, in stark contrast to the government's treatment of the Rapanui Islanders under their protection (and on their currency).  They have subjugated the indigenous population of what we know as Easter Island and in fact, had all but exterminated them, during the awful reign of the dictator, Agusto Pinochet. In 1973, our own C.I.A. helped Pinochet to assassinate the popularly elected president and installed him as the absolute ruler, in one of the bloodiest coups in world history. Almost all of the Rapanui People were slaughtered, like so much cattle. The Chilean government has now sent army troops to forcibly remove these gentle people, who want nothing more than to live and build upon their ancestral lands over which several existing treaties and Chilean laws still give them exclusive province. The Rapanui People do not  have the option to build a casino upon the scrap of  barren, un-arable, land, which they are segregated. Perhaps if the Rapanui People were Chilean, like the miners, or were among the German nationals, who fled there after WWII, they would be treated with as much deference.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

1/14/2011

Subject: Re: INTERNATIONAL ALERT: CHILEAN POLICE KEEP HITORANGI FAMILY UNDER SIEGE

I have an unconfirmed report of a death on Rapa Nui.  It is from Moises Pakarati posting on facebook.  A 16 year old was found with hands bound dead in a car.

INTERNATIONAL ALERT: CHILEAN POLICE KEEP HITORANGI  FAMILY UNDER SIEGE

An unprecedented situation of a very serious nature is going on right now  at the  Hanga Roa Hotel on Easter Island.     A strong police contingent, under the orders of Attorney General have surrounded the premises and are blocking anyone from leaving or entering.  This started on January 13^th, 2011.

According to Oscar Vargas, a formed prosecutor on the island, and an attorney for the Hitorangi clan, said,  "this is a forced fast, as a result of an order made without authority .  The only  alleged offenses are non-violent and under Chilean law are punishable only by a fine. And, in this case by the virtue of the Law of Easter Island the natural owners of the dispute land cannot be charged.”

These actions came a day after the judge on the island Bernado Toro was forced to recuse himself for corruption and discrimination,   and the  deputy judge Jacobo Hey, recused himself because of his friendly relationship with the Hitorangi clan.  Currently there is no judge assigned to hear the case of usurpation which was filed by the  Hotel investors led by Jeanette Schiess.

The Schiess are desperate to criminally charge the Hitorangi clan and commence evictions by January 14^th..     The Prosecutor  denounced the Police Chief’s order  to enter the  hotel, evict  and arrest every member of the Hitorangi clan, including women and children.

"With this absurd measure of duress, this a drastic  an infringement of the human rights of Rapa Nui, including their right to life (preventing food and substance) and mental integrity," said Vargas.

It should be noted that both parents of a two-year twins are inside the hotel and  are separate from their babies.    

Being surrounded by the police the Hitorangi Clan members in distress and are remind us of the tragic events of December 3, and 29.   The violence and repression are known throughout  the international community. There was even a ruling by the UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya.

 Anticipating this situation, the legal team of Rapa Nui managed to enter, at 12:16 A.M. on January 14, to give the family  habeas corpus protection in the Court of Appeals of Valparaiso, in order to safeguard the integrity of the occupants and owners of ancestral lands Hanga Roa hotel.

This action was taken at the request of the Prosecutor on the island even though the island currently does not have a judge.  Claims have been made about the existence of "other offenses" other than theft, which were not specified.

"All they are trying to do is  criminalize the Hitorangi clan so they will be forbidden to return to their ancestral land," said Oscar Vargas, their lawyer.

Marisol Hito, a spokeswoman for the Hitorangi clan, made an urgent appeal to the  international community to pressure the Chilean government to stop abuses against the people of Rapa Nui.

Contacts:

> Marisol Hito:          9070.9947
> Oscar Vargas:          766.29.310
> Rodrigo Gómez 94960475
> Santi Hito          845 596 5403         (English)

House Oversight Committee Refuses to Oversee The House

This ended up being an update to a post I wrote on January 4, 2011. The idea came to me after I involuntarily burst out laughing at two juxtaposed articles on page 10 of today's Denver Post.

The First article was entitled House Panel Wants Freedom of Information Papers. It tells the story of our "other brother, Darrell" Issa, R, Calif., who is demanding documents from the Department of Homeland Security about their documented policies for reviewing Freedom of Information requests. As you might have guessed, Mr. McCarthy...I mean, Mr. Issa, seems to be requesting information which is already readily available on the internet. I checked. It’s there. I thought about doing my usual cut and paste job, including a few thousand of these government documents in my post, but I have already been warned about unwarranted wordiness so...not gonna do it. It’s there. You can go look.

I expect that what Mr. Nixon...I mean, Mr. Issa, is really talking about are documents about documents. Or maybe documents about documents about documents. If so, then he is not talking about the copious volumes of readily available material, but what he really wants is the deep and dark secrets, showing the filthy underbelly of Secretary Napolitano and her whole staff. You know, anything that he can use to fill the present vacuum of his second guesses, so he can have hearings about more second guesses about any and all requests for information that were granted or denied by the administration. And he can only do that...after he finds one he doesn't like.

Hearing about these fishing expeditions, which Mr. Gonzales…I mean, Issa, will call hearings, makes me think that, when he called President Obama corrupt and accused his administration of being the most corrupt in history, he did so in anticipation of finding actual corruption, of which he heretofore has not the slightest idea. But I think he may need to dig deeper. Mr. Star...I mean, Mr. Issa, I think needs to go after documents about documents about documents about documents. I am sure that there, he will find a word or two to fill a whole Fox News cycle!

As if that one article wasn’t funny enough, right next to it, was another one called House, Justice in Clash Over Constitution. Here, the U. S. House members are claiming that they enjoy complete constitutional immunity against any and all U. S. Department of Justice corruption investigations. The austere body of elected officials are trying to use the “speech or debate” clause to keep the FBI guys out of their freezers full of dirty cash. What we call graft, money laundering, and influence peddling, they call “legislative work.” And they are not going to take it anymore! What a hoot.

But, when you put the two stories together, you get a real sense of what the new House of Representatives is really up to and what I found so hilarious. Despite their campaign rhetoric, they have absolutely no interest in cleaning their own house, so to speak, but don’t mind spending enormous amounts of time and tax-payer dollars to dig up imaginary dirt on their political enemies. I laughed and laughed…and then I stopped laughing. And now, I am just a little bit angry.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Does The Health Care Bill Really Kill Jobs?

You might recall that, on January 6, 2011, I listed some of the reasons why I thought it would be a mistake to repeal the health care legislation passed in March of last year. The effort to repeal it has been officially named "The Repeal of The Job-Killing Health Care Law," by the Tea/GOP.

So, I thought I would try to find out more about the poor unfortunate souls, whose jobs were "killed" by this legislation. I mean, if millions of jobs have been or are going to be killed by this law, I might have to change my mind about it. We already have around 10% unemployment and lots of folks are really scared of losing what job(s) they have now. The Tea/GOP would not just be using their old tried and true fear and smear tactics again, would they?

I first looked at the report from the Congressional Budget office, who, by their own web cite admits that:

CBO's mandate is to provide the Congress with:

·        Objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget and

·        The information and estimates required for the Congressional budget process.

OK. Non partisan, number crunchers. Right! I want the unvarnished truth about the affects of this legislation on jobs. This is a taste of what they said:

On March 20, 2010, CBO released its final cost estimate for the reconciliation act, which encompassed the effects of both pieces of legislation. Table 1 (on page 5) provides a broad summary and Table 2 offers a detailed breakdown of the budgetary effects of the two pieces of legislation. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting both pieces of legislation will produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period. About $124 billion of that savings stems from provisions dealing with health care and federal revenues; the other $19 billion results from the education provisions. Those figures do not include potential costs that would be funded through future appropriations (those are discussed on pages 10-11 of the cost estimate).[ Bold print provided by me].

CBO and JCT estimate that by 2019, the two pieces of legislation combined will reduce the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured by about 32 million, leaving about 23 million nonelderly residents uninsured. Those findings are presented in Table 4, along with the budgetary effects of the various provisions related to health insurance coverage. Table 5 shows the budgetary impact of the health care provisions that are not related to health insurance coverage (primarily involving the Medicare program). The impact of revenue provisions is reported separately by JCT.

CBO also analyzed the effects on health insurance premiums of an earlier version of the legislation. A November analysis examines the expected impact on average premiums for health insurance in different markets. Although CBO and JCT have not updated those estimates, the effects of the enacted legislation are expected to be quite similar.

Sounds good, right? But nothing at all about jobs. I wanted to know about jobs. The Tea/GOP want to repeal this law because they say it is killing jobs. So I went back to the CBO to see if they had anything to say about the effect of the proposed repeal of this law on JOBS, for crying out loud! This is what they had to say about that:

Impact on the Federal Budget in the First Decade

As a result of changes in direct spending and revenues, CBO expects that enacting H.R. 2 would probably increase federal budget deficits over the 2012–2019 period by a total of roughly $145 billion (on the basis of the original estimate), plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. Adding two more years (through 2021) brings the projected increase in deficits to something in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes.

Those projections do not include any potential savings in discretionary spending, which is governed by annual appropriation acts. By CBO’s estimates, repeal of the health care legislation would probably reduce the appropriations needed by the Internal Revenue Service by between $5 billion and $10 billion over 10 years. Similar savings would accrue to the Department of Health and Human Services.

There is no clear basis for projecting other effects of H.R. 2 on discretionary spending. PPACA contained a number of authorizations for future appropriations, which, if left in place, might or might not result in additional appropriations. For example, most of the authorizations were for activities that were already being carried out under current law or that were previously authorized and that PPACA authorized for future years. Thus, repeal of the PPACA authorizations might or might not result in discretionary savings associated with those authorizations.

Impact on the Federal Budget Beyond the First 10 Years

CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 2 would increase federal deficits in the decade after 2019 by an amount that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. For the decade beginning after 2021, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a share of the economy would probably be somewhat larger.

As with all of CBO’s cost estimates, these estimates—both for the first 10 years and beyond—reflect an assumption that the provisions of current law would otherwise remain unchanged throughout the projection period and that the legislation being considered would be enacted and implemented in its current form. CBO’s responsibility to the Congress is to estimate the effects of proposals as written and not to forecast future legislation. However, current law now includes a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time. If those policies or other key aspects of the original legislation would have subsequently been modified or implemented incompletely, then the budgetary effects of repealing PPACA and the relevant provisions of the Reconciliation Act could be quite different—but CBO cannot forecast future changes in law or assume such changes in its estimates.

Effects on the Number of People with Health Insurance

Under H.R. 2, about 32 million fewer nonelderly people would have health insurance in 2019, leaving a total of about 54 million nonelderly people uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, compared with a projected share of 94 percent under current law (and 83 percent currently).

Effects on Health Insurance Premiums

If H.R. 2 was enacted, premiums for health insurance in the individual market would be somewhat lower than under current law, mostly because the average insurance policy in this market would cover a smaller share of enrollees’ costs for health care and a slightly narrower range of benefits. Although premiums in the individual market would be lower, on average, under H.R. 2 than under current law, many people would end up paying more for health insurance—because under current law, the majority of enrollees purchasing coverage in that market would receive subsidies via the insurance exchanges, and H.R. 2 would eliminate those subsidies.

Premiums for employment-based coverage obtained through large employers would be slightly higher under H.R. 2 than under current law. Premiums for employment-based coverage obtained through small employers might be slightly higher or slightly lower (reflecting uncertainty about the impact of the enacted legislation on premiums in that market).

HOOWAH! All interesting stuff, but not a word about any jobs killed or un-killed by repealing the law. Granted, a good deal of their information is couched in econ-mumbo-jumbo, so the net gain or loss of jobs could be indirect as affected by general economic conditions. Could be the jobs answer was really there, but hidden behind the Keynesian kerfuffle and I'm just not smart enough to see it.

And what was the Tea/GOP reaction to the CBO reports? The new Speaker of the House, John Boehner, reacted this way:

“I do not believe that repealing the job- killing health care law will increase the deficit,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said about the CBO’s findings. “CBO can only provide a score based on the assumptions that are given to them. And if you go back and look at the health care bill and the assumptions that were given to them, you see all of the double-counting that went on, you see the fact that the doc fix wasn't even part of the bill.”

Then, just as I was about to sign off, I read this about the job-killing!

“The evidence is overwhelming that this health care law, by raising taxes, imposing new mandates and increasing uncertainty, is already destroying jobs in our country. It will continue to destroy jobs in America unless we do something about it,” Boehner said. “The [GOP] report shows how the law is making it harder to end the job-killing spending binge that threatens our children's future. And when you look at it dollar by dollar, you can tell that the numbers just don't add up.”

This “report” claimed to detail why the law killed jobs and with what they would replace it: 

“With 10 percent unemployment and massive debt, the American people want us to focus on cutting spending and growing our economy. That's what repealing the health care law is all about,” Boehner said. “I hope the House will act next week to repeal the job-killing health care law so we can get started on replacing it with commonsense reforms that will reduce the cost of health insurance in America.”

When I got to this part, I thought, wow! This report they have must contain  new intel that is not the same old regurgitation of nonsensical platitudes that they were spewing up during the debate last March. Sadly, but predictably:

 "The resolution sets out a dozen broad goals that align with long-standing GOP preferences for changes to the health-care system. Among them are "increased competition and choice" in insurance, changes to the medical liability system, and giving states more freedom over the shape of Medicaid. One item -- to "provide people with preexisting conditions access to aff

The president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spoke in lock-step with the Tea/GOP, when he stated:

"Think for a moment about the nation's job creators—the men and women who run our small and large businesses—as well as those who lead our universities, our health care facilities and the many other institutions that employ our workforce. If you were in their shoes today, would you jump quickly into new investments and hiring? Or would you wait for some clarity, and some common sense, to take hold first?

Most of these job creators would like nothing more than to keep their workers employed, create new jobs, and bring some hope and relief to families struggling without a paycheck. But when they look at what's going on in Washington, in the states, and around the world, what do they see?

They see massive tax increases on the horizon—not just the expiration of the tax cuts passed over the last decade, but also hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes.

They see health care legislation that contains a burdensome mandate on employers and virtually no meaningful reforms to improve quality or control costs.

Congress and the administration also need to find more rational and affordable ways to address health care and climate change."

The Chamber supports a health care reform bill and we have offered many positive ideas to Congress, the administration, and the American people.

Unfortunately, the legislation emerging from the House and Senate is not reform. It's not reform when you undermine the private, employer-based system while doing nothing to rein in costs. It's a prescription for fiscal insolvency and an eventual government takeover of American health care."

I got the impression that this guy, in his speech on Tuesday, at chamber headquarters, was telling his business buddies all over the country, to NOT hire until health care legislation was repealed! If he is advocating holding job creation hostage, until he gets his way with health care, that certainly will affect jobs!

And I've heard all this before. What the Tea/GOP folks and their corporate sugar daddies are actually saying...again, is that this deficit-reducing law will actually increase the deficit and kill jobs. They are saying… again, that the tax breaks for small business employers, (so that they can give their employees health insurance for the first time) is actually a tax hike that will not create a healthier, more productive workforce, but will kill jobs. They are saying… again, that "increased competition and choice" will, this time, magically force the oligopolistic health insurance companies to provide insurance to people with preexisting conditions. They are saying… again, that limiting liability for doctors who are drunk, or who fall asleep, or who are just not competent and botch operations and kill people will stop the obscene yearly increases in health care costs and so health insurance will go down. It won’t and they know it. Costs have actually gone up, in states that have limited medical liability as part of general tort reform. And does the thought of giving doctors a free pass make anyone out there feel better about getting an operation?

I am so sorry that I could not give you better news. Does the Tea/GOP think that, if they say it over and over and over, ideas that haven't worked in the last thirty years will somehow attain new legitimacy? Shouting out great-sounding-yet empty platitudes have worked so well for them in the past, so they will attempt to repeal a “job killing” law that does not kill jobs. I don't know why I expected anything different.

Why are they doing this? That part’s simple. They’re just dancing with the date that brung em.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo 

Fear Sells

In most civilized societies, it is considered a heinous crime of a truly depraved heart to fire into a crowd of people, even absent actual intent to injure any one person in particular. The mental state of the actor, in knowing but not caring that her actions will most certainly cause serious bodily injury to someone, is what elevates or aggravates the act, from manslaughter, to murder.

Rush, using radio broadcasts to inject daily doses of fear and hatred into the veins of some weak, sick, minds and troubled hearts is also heinous, even though you can’t see the faces of the people you make sicker. You are a savior to some of these people, and you make them sicker. Well adjusted, mentally healthy people may agree with your politics but are not your disciples.  You sell advertising on the back of folks that you hurt.

Rupert, fomenting that fear into hatred of a particular class of people and serving daily draughts of this toxic brew to already psychologically weakened, scared, and angry people only makes them more weak, scared, and angry. You know that this is true. You're counting on it. You have a whole network devoted to it. That is how you made your fortune.

And Sarah, you know that there are weak-minded, scared, and angry people out there, who will swallow just about any brand of snake oil you are hawking, because they are already sick and need to believe that you have the cure. You've met many of them for a moment and then quickly forgot them. Your folksy charm, winks, bullseyes, and reload metaphors both settle the nerves and inflame the passions of some of these good people and make them feel more comfortable about hating your targets and wishing that they could get them in their sites. What some of us would call psychopathic manipulation, you call a marketing strategy.

Glenn, you know that most of us laugh at you when you offer us survivalist backpacks and use your big chalk board to divine the degrees of separation between Kevin Bacon and the Apocalypse, but you are laughing all the way to the bank. You know that there are weak-minded, sick, scared, and angry people out there who buy, literally, what you are selling. They are already scared half to death (by you and your network), but you don’t mind giving them an extra little nudge when the ratings demand it.

Darrell I., Michelle B., Jon K., John B., Jim D., Sharon E., you know full well that, when you call our President a corrupt, Socialist, Communist, non-American, Muslim, who must be stopped, you are not just yammering. You long for that special present on your secret wish list. When you spend your days pushing the drug du jour for your corporate sponsors, you are also screwing with the minds of some weak, sick, people, who are already at the end of their psychological rope. Your invective makes them weaker, sicker, more fearful, and enraged. And predictably, a psychotic or two over extends one of your talking points into a delusional yet patriotic rationale for murdering innocent people. But that is not your problem. It is not your fault. It’s just collateral damage. And you have no shame about finding a way to spin the tragedy away from you and onto your opponents. Just politics, as usual.

None of you charlatans are to be despised for making a living. You are to be despised for selling fear and for so callously dehumanizing the faceless people whose welfare you hold in trust. They do have faces and have lives and have worth, and they look to you for a moral compass to navigate a path away from their malaise. And you don’t give a damn. They are out there, even though the only face you can actually see is your own reflection in the camera lens.


J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Jan Brewer Needs A Heart Transplant

One of my oldest friends pointed out that my posts were too wordy. So Ray, this spartan post is for you, buddy.

In Arizona, there were 98 very sick, low income American citizens who needed organ transplants to keep from dying. They had been placed on an organ donor list by Access Insurance, an Arizona State government program that received about 4-1 matching funds from the feds. Arizona's ante was about one million.

When it came time for Republican Governor Jan Brewer and her legislature to craft the 2011 state budget, they shut down the program and put the money into prisons instead. As a result, people who were hanging on for dear life until an organ was available were told  to drop dead. Even those patients who managed to survive until they were at the top of the list were simply de-listed. One guy named Feliz was at the hospital, being prepped to receive a liver from his best friend, who had made the donation before his death.  He was sent home to die instead, and the liver was presumably given to a paying customer. In the last two weeks, two of the 98 patients have died of organ failure.

Confronted by the mainstream international media about this travesty, the Governor's response was that the budget was tight and therefore required tough decisions. She said there was simply no money anywhere for the program. The government’s de-listing of patients from organ donor lists has been euphemistically dubbed the Arizona Death Panel, as the government has literally condemned these 98 law-abiding citizens to death. The Republican controlled Arizona State Legislature also gave its stamp of approval to Brewer's decision.  U. S. Senator Jon Kyle, from Arizona, stated that death is simply not Arizona's responsibility. Dr. (and Senator) Chuck Grassley and the rest of the Tea/GOP coalition in Washington have been strangely silent about the Arizona Death Panel, but they are really steamed at the progressives for coming up with such a catchy moniker.

Then another Republican official, a 30 year old named Steven Daglas...from Illinois, saw one of the sick people (a 27 year old woman, who had been taken off of the list, two weeks before she was to receive her transplant) on MSNBC's Countdown, with Keith Olbermann. Now Mr. Daglas is a guy who treasures a photo of himself standing next to his hero, Karl Rove, and touts his credentials as a dyed-in-the wool fiscal conservative, but he took it upon himself, out of a sheer sense of humanity, to try to find a way to help this young woman and the others on the list. 

Mr. Daglas pored through thousands and thousands of pages of the Arizona State budget, line by line. He even accessed budget committee minutes etc. and came up with 26 different ways that Arizona could come up with the million bucks, without taking a dime from the budget. 26! And they were all perfectly legal and viable under state law. One of them was to earmark funds from the AIG settlement. Another was to sell bonds from tobacco money that was already owed to the state. Another would remove superfluous subsidies to some Arizona sports teams. And there were 23 others.

Although his ideas have resonated with Democrats and even some Republicans in Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer has thus far refused to even respond. My hope is that Jan Brewer will get a heart transplant herself (hers is obviously non-functional) and use any one or more of these ideas, before another innocent sick person has to die. Hope springs eternal.

Then I got to thinking. Why prisons over transplants in the first place? I knew that the Arizona budget was tight, just like every other state in the union, but most states have responded to shortfalls by cutting prison beds and boosting less costly community corrections programs, for low-level offenders and drug addicts, who can be safely managed and rehabilitated outside expensive prison walls. Effective use of monitoring devices and cognitive restructuring therapy have been shown to be more effective in preventing recidividism than prison, with no effective increase in crime rates. So why prisons?

And so I thought...Arizona...aren’t those the same rugged individuals who refused to use Daylight Savings Time? Aren't they the same patriots who passed a law  requiring cops to demand proof of legal residency from any brown person who walks against the light or has a cracked windshield? Do they not have more than their fair share of gun-toting, white supremacist, paranoiacs? Yes, yes, and yes, but that still didn't explain why the State Tea/GOP would let 100 people die, just to fund more prisons. Did their prison population suddenly increase?

Apparently it did. In Maricopa County alone (this includes Phoenix) there has been a 28% increase in the HISPANIC prison population since 2004. About 2,751 Hispanics currently reside behind bars. Ok, so that's one reason. All those scary illegal brown fruit pickers, dishwashers, toilet scrapers, stone masons, roofers, pool cleaners, and landscapers cost money to incarcerate. Ok, so they also committed crimes. But, if they were white...uh...legal, most of these folks probably would have gotten sentenced to a term of much less expensive probation. But, being illegal, they can't be on probation because they cannot work legally, so they are sent to prison and then deported. There, that's one reason.

Another reason for the diversion of funds to prisons?  In 2006, Arizona passed a law denying bail to illegal aliens accused of crimes. Once arrested for being brown, even if they hire an immigration attorney to help them become legal and have family who can post both state and federal bonds, they have to remain in jail for months to years. If they finally are exonerated or plead to a non-prisonable charge, then they are released to ICE and are deported. That's another reason.

Then there is the recent huge expansion of private prisons in Arizona. In fact, Arizona pays out more money to private campaign contributors...uh...I mean, private prisons than to state-run facilities. The recent budget diversion has been disproportionately devoted to private prisons run by folks like Corrections Corporation of America. Yet another reason.

Now the budget appears more like a recipe than just a series of unconnected, monumentally stupid decisions by a bunch of ignorant, heartless, yokels. There is method to the apparent madness after all, and it is a recipe that is catching on in other states as well.

You start with two cups of mean spiritedness, and then add one cup xenophobia, one cup jingoism, two cups racism, three cups arrogance, and three cups fear. Blend thoroughly in a bowl paid for by corporate donors, until the ingredients are unrecognizable, then bake in the withering Arizona (you may substitute Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, etc.) sun, until the top crust takes on the tanned, (if it’s brown, you baked it too long!) leathery, wrinkled, texture of Jan Brewer's face. Shovel onto a red white and blue platter and serve lukewarm, to whomever is stupid, afraid, or just naturally paranoid enough to swallow it. 

Sincerely,

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

What To Do About The Lying Charlatans?

Ok. So I was reading a bunch of blogs from news sources that I have trusted in the past to give me the unvarnished truth regarding various issue of the day. What I typically found was that credible news sources would blow the lid off of some fear/smear/info-tainment from the radical/right/ranters and then a bunch of anonymous goobers would comment by saying some version of, "right on!" or, "you’re full of it!" What nonsense! I mean the whole Kabuki dance.

How about a serious discussion about expanding liable/defamation laws to cover hateful trash designed to incite insurrection, murder, or ruin the careers of public figures? First Amendment problems? Public Figure exception? How low does the bar have to get before it is hate speech? Before it is like yelling fire in a crowded theater? These are the topics we should be discussing.

These trashmeisters aren’t misinformed. They are doing it for Rupert, or ratings, or just for cold hard cash. They’re not going to simply go away. 22% of the population either suffer from single-digit IQs, or are already so paralyzed with fear, that they buy whatever snake oil these charlatans are selling. Printing the truth and then clucking our tongues at the filthy liars is a start, but not an antidote to the venom they spread so quickly.

I have an idea to kick around. How about, the next yahoo who screams "liar" during the President's State of The Union speech, gets arrested and jailed, for contempt of congress? That ought to get the discussion going, don't you think? Or we could take another look at the Sedition Act of 1798? How about the one in 1918? You know how fond those strict constructionists are of old laws!

Sincerely,

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

More Fun Facts About Health Care in The U.S.

I wrote a long rant yesterday, but as an addendum, I thought I would include a couple of facts not mentioned:

1. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Health Care Law will save tax payers about $143 billion over the next ten years. The Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act proposed by the Tea/GOP coalition doesn't really want to hear about actual savings and predictably, refuses to say exactly who will lose their jobs, if the law is allowed to proceed. You should ask them.

2. Although the 2007-2009 recession did slow down health care spending a bit, Americans still spent and average of  $8,086.00 per person on health care in 2009. This was only a 4% increase from 2008 but the slower growth is directly linked to the recently unemployed losing their health coverage, having no money, staying sick, you know, dying.

3. Even though the economy actually shrank, from 2007-2009, health care costs, as a percentage of GDP, actually rose by 17.6%. For those of us who actually live from paycheck, to paycheck, this means that approximately $1 out of every $6 we spent was on health care. That's a record increase. Keep in mind that “ObamaCare” was not passed until 2010 and you are free to re-read paragraph #1.

4. Because the folks who lost their jobs to teenagers in Mumbai and China also lost their health insurance, the gummint had to pump an extra $30 billion into federal-state health programs for low-income people. Of course, this was before that job-killing law kicked in, and covered about 30 million of these folks. Again, please see paragraph #1.

5. Despite the recession, or maybe because of it, pharmacorps made out like bandits between 2008 and 2009. Unmoved by the pedestrian issues increasingly plaguing those ant-like folks, whom they (if they actually looked) could barely see, pounding the pavement far below their penthouse offices, these Titans of Pharmaland reacted to the middle class malaise by simply jacking up their drug prices and continuing to pay kickbacks to "primary care physicians," who hawked more crap, instead of cures. Americans spent about $250 billion on drugs (non-recreational) in 2009, representing a 5% increase, from 2008. Makes sense. If you can't afford the cure or insurance refuses to pay for the latest proven treatment, then you go for plan B and take a pill, or a bunch of pills.

The next time you have the money to actually visit your doctor's office and are waiting for minutes, or hours for your doctor or PA to come back from an executive lunch or a botox appointment, look around and see how many pharmaceutical labels you can spot on the walls, on pads, pens, trinkets, notebooks, and on anatomically correct mock-ups of diseased bones or organs for which you have to take pills, because your insurance won't allow your doctor to fix.

6. Insurance companies usually require what they call "step therapy," before they may be forced to authorize what they know will actually cure you. Before you can get the latest drug or therapy (that members of congress receive immediately and for free) you have to start with the out-of-patent,  and therefore cheap, generic, treatment or drug, developed, (or found by accident) 50 or more years ago. If that doesn't work, then insurance companies may authorize a late 20th Century course of treatment. If you still get no relief, and your doctor, usually a specialist by this time, will fight tooth and nail with the insurance company, you may receive the treatment or medicine that she and you knew would have eased your suffering six months ago.

But be careful what you wish for. That new designer drug or treatment is probably not covered or fully covered by your insurance, because it is still under patent and so is, very, very expensive. Check the fine print of your policy. It is there, as I can attest from personal experience. If you already suffer from any kind of nervous condition, high blood pressure, or other ailment that might send you into apoplexy after reading your insurance bill, have someone else break the news to you in a more circuitous fashion.

It's no wonder that at least 27 million Americans are currently on some kind of psychotropic medication. I believe that many of those folks are not really clinically depressed. They are depressed, because some things really do suck and the folks that they elected to make those things better are too busy playing golf, buggering pages, and lining their pockets with corporate cash, to do somethin about it.

Please, somebody give me a rational reason why we should not have socialized medicine?

Sincerely,

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

.

Repeal and Replace This!

I think that we can all agree that Barack Obama was elected on a platform of change from the last eight years of “business as usual” in Washington. The President inherited two wars, a financial meltdown of historic proportion, and a massive deficit engineered and kept off the books by the last administration. In the last two years, the GOP, (the party that was ousted from power, because of the mess they created) did nothing in Washington, but say “no” to almost all proposed legislation, without offering a single viable alternative. The "all about change" Democrats, cried foul and then consistently...whined....a lot!

It took that “shellacking” at the polls in November for the Obama policy wonks to finally get the message that, if you want the substantive spaghetti to stick to the walls in heartland America, the message is just as important, if not more so, than the means. By December of 2010, after months of doing various impressions of a deer in the headlights and talking about it…a lot, the donkeys finally borrowed the stones (from Conan the Barbarian?) and shamed the kicking and screaming, GOP,“no-sayers,” into not phoning in filibusters on a few really vital pieces of legislation. This is a taste of what the Democrats finally accomplished in one month:

The START Treaty (supported by every administration since Washington, but the GOP still felt rushed!)

DADT Repeal (only took em 15 years!)

911 First Responders Compensation (only took em 10 years!)

Food Safety (GOP griped, because it costs money to not poison people!) 

Tax Relief (GOP said OK, only if the million/billionaires got a windfall as well!) at all levels of income, including estate taxes, and capital gains and exemption for such things as child educational expenses, a credit for post-secondary education, renewable energy tax incentives, small business deductions, increased depreciation allowances, a temporary reduction in payroll taxes, enhanced deductions for charitable giving, marriage penalty relief, and an extension of deductions up to 100%, for farmers who grant conservation easements. If you look at the above provisions, you can understand why Obama forged this compromise. He was actually looking out for the middle class.

Today, January, 5, 2011, the 112^th Congress swore to protect and defend the United States Constitution.  The new GOP/Tea coalition (now in control of the House) also swore to make it their tippy-top priority, to make President Obama a one-term president. To that end, they also swore that their first order of business will be to cast a vote to repeal the Health Care Legislation. They have vowed to replace it with... something else, but have offered nadita nueva, as most of their bright ideas were already contained in the bi-partisan compromise bill which they helped to write and then decided later that they didn’t want and now want to repeal. They are using a similar strategy to balance the books by slashing programs in next year’s budget, but refuse to say which ones are slated for the axe. We will discuss that on another day.

Since the House of Representatives was the only legislative body to turn to the dark side at midterms, any Health Care repeal vote has zero chance of actually abrogating the existing law and the Tea/GOP coalition (and the rest of the country) knows it. So after they get done wasting a bunch more time and news cycles on that, they intend to try piecemeal to strip individual fiscal notes for each provision of the law. One thing the Tea/GOP folks are already great at is making laws with lots of form and no substance.

I got fed up hearing that the health care law is a really BBBAAADDD law, but not why.  I thought that I needed to read for myself, about some of its more insidious, sinister, and corrupt provisions. And so, I was forced against my better nature to embark upon an exhaustive research project on the subject. And by that, I mean I read a newspaper:

1. No Child can be denied coverage on her family’s plan for a preexisting condition. This provision will extend to adults as well, by 2014. Several health insurers have already responded to that provision by simply canceling the policy for the entire family. That is their answer. Kind of an actuarially based, gotta make more profits, don’t give a damn about actual sick people thing.  Their lawyers worked overtime to find this loophole so they could pay nothing to make sick kids well again. OK. These insurance companies are full of sick, greedy bastards, I get that, but why do the Tea/GOP folks say that the American People don’t want the change? Poll after poll (except for Faux News) show that, not only do a majority of Americans support the law, but a significant minority think it is not strong enough. So with what are they going to replace this provision? The only Americans who don’t want this to be law of the land are the CEOs of Signa, Anthem, United Health, etc. and the rich stock-holders (same guys).

2. No more annual limits or life-time limits for patient care. Makes sense to me. You are insured, for crying out loud! You get cancer. You should not lose your house, while you are fighting to survive. What self-respecting, humane, individual, North of Hell, would oppose this change (besides the insurance industry)? And again, with what is the Tea/GOP going to replace this provision? Low-cost funeral insurance maybe?

3. Your kid can stay on your health insurance plan until they are 26. Corporate America has managed to shrink the middle class to the size of a walnut and a college education no longer guarantees a job. In fact, the job market is still so abysmal, that five people are applying for every job which has not been outsourced to Mumbai or China.  And guess who goes bankrupt, if your kid gets sick? Yes, I have no problem with this provision either, as I do not now, nor  have I ever governed my life by actuarial principles, but rather, by the principles of hopeless progressives, like Jesus, Gandhi, and Bullwinkle J. Moose. Perhaps the Tea/GOP coalition will pledge to personally fund the health care of any sick twenty-something in their district. When they sign as much on the dotted line, I’ll support a repeal of this provision.

4. Insurance companies must now spend 80-85% of the premiums they rake in, on actual health care and sickness prevention programs. Wait just a doggone minute! That’s Communist/Socialist/un-American and anti-Free Market! How can the Tea/GOP stand idly by, while health care insurers are forced to devote more to patient’s health and less to obscene profit margins for rich stockholders? Seriously, does any sane person really believe that the poor insurance companies will go broke if they are forced to actually provide the services for which they are paid? What’s 20% of a brazillion dollars? Not as good as the 60% industry-wide standard it was before, that is true. After the Tea/GOP coalition repeals this provision, with what will they replace it? What percentage would be fair to an industry, whose main goal is, and will always be, to deny us coverage, whenever possible, so that they may continue to expand their little oligarchy? Socialism or Plutocracy. It’s an easy choice for me, but I am not running for public office.

5. A discount for some prescription drugs for seniors, currently caught by the infamous Medicare “doughnut hole.” I guess if you are elderly and have to choose between eating a decent meal and purchasing your life-sustaining medication, you can always live on cat food. Many seniors now do just that, and this provision may help them to buy more people food. There are a BUNCH of old farts in Congress, but they get free health care and the best that our tax dollars can buy. So I guess I see why the Tea/GOP coalition would want to do away with this provision as well. Replacement? A tax break for seniors who buy inordinately large quantities of kibble?

6. Free screenings for seniors. This one’s easy. If non-congressionally connected seniors don’t get screened, then they die and insurance companies don’t have to pay squatola. Plus, the gummint saves a bundle on So-So Security and Medicare benefits. Wow!  Now I think the Tea/GOP is onto something! They do have a plan after all. Kind of a “ gag em, tag em, and bag em” strategy.

7. All citizens are individually mandated to buy health insurance. The obvious rational argument is that, if all citizens were required to buy insurance, the actuarial risks involved would be spread more evenly (and, not incidentally, the insurance companies would make a bundle) and hospitals would no longer have to increase fees to account for emergency room services. The Don’t Tread on Me, Tea/GOP argument is that this requirement is nothing more than extortion. I mean, why should a young, healthy dude have to dig into his micro-brew fund to subsidize a sick boomer? And why should safe drivers have to buy car insurance? And why should people with cars, pay to subsidize public transportation? And why should a childless couple pay property taxes that are used to fund local schools? And why should people in private gated communities have to pay for police and fire protection that extends to public neighborhoods?

I seem to remember something in high school about the social contract, to which all civilized societies agree, in order to provide for the general welfare of its citizenry. But, if the Tea/GOP were to look at my last sentence, they would only see the words, social and welfare. Just because our founding fathers actually based our principles of government on that same social contract doesn’t mean that gerbils like Michelle Bachman and Allen West  will learn as much during the U.S. Constitution for Dummies lessons that they are attending with Antonin Scalia and his Gang of Five.

In sum, I could easily live with the whole repeal and replace strategy, if they repealed the  health insurance/AMA/pharmacorp stranglehold on the American people and replaced it with a robust Public Option or better yet, a government sponsored, Single Payer Health Plan, modeled after Medicare. Then the Tea/GOP could concentrate their collective brain power on something really important, like repealing the repeal of DADT.

Sincerely,

J. Brandeis Sperandeo