HSMN SoapBox

What a surprise!  Giving away money works!!  People will actually take it!!

According to Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation (not a czar, but a real cabinet member),

“Cash for Clunkers is the most successful program in the history of stimulus”.

What?

Now I’m feeling bad to have said that, because it’s possible that the Secretary is developmentally challenged, has a brain tumor, or maybe his brain is just exceptionally small and has broken free of its moorings inside his calvarium, and here we are making fun of him. I apologize if any of the above really is the case.

More likely, though, this is just an exquisite example of total bureaucratic BS (TBBS).

If they’re proud of (AND stunned by) the effectiveness of “cash for clunkers” why not really double-down with this as a new revenue stream: “Clunkers for Cash + Your Car”.

Think about it: turn in your present car (let’s say it’s a 2008 7-Series BMW), give the dealer $5,000, and drive off in a 1966 Corvair with 400,000 miles on it. If that program works, you really are a genius, probably worthy of a Nobel Prize…

…which reminds me:

• We have been trying to avoid partisan-type politics here, but this Nobel Prize thing is just so screamingly egregious that this is now nearly impossible. (For the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of a political party – closest political affiliation would be the “common sense + please leave me alone and I promise to do likewise” party, which doesn’t exist, yet.)

• Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m going to repeat that: Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize. (By the way, Gandhi would have celebrated his birthday on October 2, had he lived to be 140.) When asked why Gandhi didn’t win, the Nobel Committee said something along the lines of, “Hmmmm, that is weird, we’re not sure.”

• Al Gore did win the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m going to repeat that, also: Al Gore did win the Nobel Peace Prize. This was ostensibly for his movie (which also won an Academy Award) based on a PowerPoint presentation (designer unknown) about his revelation that the earth’s mean troposopheric temperature is still actually changing by small degrees over time, just like it always has since the planet formed. The Nobel people were so impressed by his accomplishment that they elevated Mr. Gore to a position high above Gandhi, as far as peace is concerned.

• Yasser Arafat also won the Nobel Peace Prize. (I can’t think of anything to add here.)

So, bottom line, if YOU are over the age of 18 and you haven’t won the Nobel Peace Prize yet, what is the deal? What is wrong with you??

To nominate yourself, a friend or even one of your tropical fish for a Nobel Peace Prize, point your browser at: http://nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/

Is that easy or what? Peace of cake!

Oh, and congratulations!

In faux “State of the Union” regalia, our President addressed a special joint session of Congress in prime time on Wednesday to fill in the gaps in his healthcare reform plan, and take a few pot shots at non-believers.

A product of teams of speechwriters, dual StagePro teleprompters and the President’s considerable speechification talents, the event was of the glossy high quality that we have come to expect. And well worth the billion or so dollars that it probably cost us.

Content-wise, though, it was puzzling for a couple of reasons.

Weird new fact #1: The famous “47 million uninsured Americans” dwindled overnight to just “30 million”.

Really? Where did the 17 million people go?

Maybe they were all very, very ill and they died in the past couple of days because they didn’t have health insurance.

I would prefer to think that they all suddenly got health insurance, and they’re fine now. (Hey, maybe if we wait a few more days, everyone else will find health insurance, too, and we can cancel the whole healthcare reform emergency…)

Or maybe they never existed in the first place. Something tells me that if 17 million people can politically drop off the endangered list this easily, our politicians will be able to squish the numbers into whatever they need at any given moment.

Weird new fact #2: Apparently, the planned miraculous, simultaneous expansion of healthcare availability, quality and affordability will now not add one cent to the federal budget deficit.

Wow, that’s great news! The last estimate of the cost of this vote-buying scheme healthcare reform plan was 1.4 thousand billion dollars (I think “thousand billion” sounds more impressive than “trillion”). Perhaps a second, more careful, listen to the speech would reveal some phrase like, “huge tax increases for y’all”, but on the first pass all that emerged was that a little “chipping-in” on the part of presumably well-heeled employers would more than cover it.

That’s 1.4 thousand billion “chips”, folks.

Now that should get those employers employing a LOT more people.

Oh, wait a minute – this is the healthcare reform emergency blog, not the economic collapse emergency blog.

It’s easy to conflate them sometimes, isn’t it?

According to CNN, which I assume does not make up most of its news, a recent graduate of Monroe College in the Bronx, New York, has sued her alma mater approximately three months after her graduation with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree. The reason: she has not found her dream job yet.

Seriously. It’s been three whole months. What kind of “college” is this, anyway? My alma mater (and I am sure yours was equally expansive) absolutely guaranteed that I would be, at the very least, the King of Sweden within a year after graduation (ja, it’s me).

Among our plaintiff’s outstanding accomplishments were: “…a solid attendance record…and a 2.7 grade-point average.” Wow.

She is seeking $70,000 in reimbursement for her entire tuition, and an additional $2,000 to compensate for the stress of her almost-three-whole-month job search. Wow again.

In addition to the obvious lunacy of this case, consider the irony of a brand-new graduate in business not having the slightest clue about her entrance into our economy’s current graveyard spiral.

Incidentally, our li’l plaintiff is also accusing the college’s Office of Career Advancement of favoring other graduates with, for example, 4.0 GPA’s. Hmmm. Wonder why any student would bother working harder just to get good grades?

It’s just not fair.

I didn’t make this up. See the original story on CNN.

One of the interesting features of current events in Washington is the extreme urgency that seems to define almost every issue.

When banks “suddenly” noticed that they had staggering numbers of bad assets on their books, it was an emergency:  the government must provide them with insane amounts of money (that it doesn’t have) today, or disaster will certainly result.

Healthcare reform is also, apparently, an emergency. If gigantic federal healthcare reform legislation (similar to that proposed the last time this was deemed an emergency in the early 1990’s) isn’t passed by an arbitrary date in August, we are doomed. Curiously, failure to pass said legislation will not alter Congress’ month-long vacation plans. (Did I say that out loud?)

Even something that changes as slowly as Earth’s climate somehow qualifies as an emergency.

There is one thing that really is an emergency: 10% of us are out of work, and more will be soon.

You know, businesses like to hire more people and grow their businesses, and they will if they’re not strangled to death by Washington. How about trying something simple and obvious like DRAMATICALLY LOWERING taxes – all taxes – on individuals, corporations, everybody. You’ll get your economic recovery, at the expense, perhaps, of a few layers of government fat. And it would probably cost less than the so-called stimulus package that was (you saw this coming, didn’t you) rushed through the Congress. Know anybody who’s been hired (or re-hired) as a result of that?

Guess there’s no rush to reduce the money flowing into Washington. How about that.

Well, okay, not free for you and me, exactly, and the universe has nothing to do with it.

Our federal government is in a considerable rush to pass a monumental so-called reform of our healthcare system. Why? Not sure, but apparently sometime during the last few years the existing system was designated as one of a slew of imminent catastrophes that would soon destroy us all.

The actual bills ricocheting around Capitol Hill are, as Al Gore might say, “complicated” (well over 1,000 pages so far, and limited only, I believe, by a tree shortage in Washington, DC) but here is a quick summary. (Don’t worry, it’s simplified, so that even stupid outside-the-beltway people can wrap our minds around it):

The pluses:

• More people will be “covered”
• The cost of healthcare will decrease
• The quality of healthcare will increase

The minuses:

• Somebody has to come up with a trillion or so dollars to pay for it, during the worst economic downturn in generations

Making the above ledger balance (not to mention the federal budget) will take some very serious bureaucratic magic.

If you’re thinking that it might not be smart to raise taxes in a deep economic recession, don’t worry. The government has already thought of that, and promises that whomever does get taxed, it won’t be you.

Besides, you have to be employed or profitable to pay taxes anyway.

And don’t forget, you do have a right to be taxed more heavily if you wish, so write your congressperson. He or she will be very happy to hear from you.

According to a well-known oncology device company,  CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is proposing an astonishing cut to Medicare reimbursement for cancer treatment, specifically radiation therapy at freestanding clinics that serve patients who are not near major hospitals. Some radiation therapy procedures at these clinics would receive a reimbursement reduction of nearly 44 percent.

This proposal appears to be based on the mistaken assumption that linear accelerators are being over-utilized. Local clinics are very important to patients who need ready access to medical linear accelerators for the 20 to 40 daily treatments that will help to cure their disease.  Obviously, long trips from home to the hospital can be very difficult for elderly and ill patients.  If these proposed cuts are adopted by our government this fall, it could cause many freestanding clinics to close, moving life-saving radiotherapy beyond the reach of many patients whose lives depend upon it.

See? Works every time.

Wouldn’t it be great if the federal government played an even more active role in our healthcare?