Who Needs Universal Health Care?

People like Michael Moore, that's who! Did you know he was a third-generation unemployed union auto worker, not to mention a heart attack waiting to happen (have you seen him lately?). No WONDER he's screaming for universal health care--he's pretty much had it his whole life until he got fired from GM. Union benefits are the best.

You might want to check this out if you're serious about not wanting universal coverage in this country: Anti-Universal Health Coverage Club

In the words of Ted Nugent: "to have health care, you have to first care about your health." People should be lining up in the produce section rather than the drive-thru lane!

Update: after watching him on Larry King last Saturday night, I learned that HE ALREADY HAS HIS OWN UNION-STYLE COVERAGE as well as his employees--this means he wants YOU to have AND PAY FOR universal health care coverage while he, other union members, and Congresscritters escape the extra taxes and unwanted "nanny care." Hell, they already HAVE it!

The lesson here is that if you want someone else to take care of you, get an education that will lead to a union job (or marry someone with a union job). Otherwise, you're on your own--the produce section's that-a-way ------>.

In Honor of High Milk Prices

A rerun of a previous article depicting the LACK of need for milk at all:

Moooove Over, Bossy--There's a New Nutrition Game in Town

If you feel you must have milk, it looks like the typical frugal move of buying powdered is the best one to make for the nonce. Blame ethanol for this whole fiasco!

Liberty in all its Glory

First, let me define liberty, because it’s been awhile since civics class for a lot of us—some of us never made it that far in school, according to the latest school dropout statistics. Some of you haven’t gotten there yet, and still more could care less.

Liberty, according to pertinent Wikipedia gospel, “is generally considered a concept of political philosophy and identifies the condition in which an individual has the ability to act according to his or her own will.” Other pertinent information about liberty in general: “John Stuart Mill, in his work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion.”

In general terms, without my inserting an adjective before the word LIBERTY, there’s a description of the flip-sides of liberty: “Positive liberty is often described as freedom to achieve certain ends, while negative liberty is described as from external coercion.”

Freedom TO and freedom FROM—I wrote about that once in regard to religion, but since deleted it.

While the words freedom, tyranny, and liberty may have fallen on quaint times, smothered by the rampant commercialism of the entire July 4th holiday, they still carry important meaning in our lives today.

We were given voting power and other rights to prevent encroachment on our personal liberty as identified by our forefathers, yet we don’t acknowledge it, don’t use it, or cede it altogether in favor of political agendas. When actually shown the definitions and defining statements above, you can see where many of our personal freedoms have been trampled, continue to be trampled, and where there are future plans for further trampling (if you’ve been keeping up with congressional activity at all—watch C-SPAN once in awhile to see it for yourselves).

We were even given a statue commemorating liberty, but are we really free? Do we really have liberty? What has that statue come to represent over the years?

If you feel you are without liberty, how can you get it back? The answer lies in the voting booth—be aware of issues important to you, be aware of candidates who can and have actually done something in the way of preservation and expansion of liberty, and keep an eye out for possible future contenders. Mark your ballots accordingly, without regard for anyone else or any concerns but your own—for the preservation of YOUR liberties, not the planet’s liberties, not Sudan’s liberties, and not corporate liberties. True freedom and the exercise of liberty begins at home.

You need to become your own activist to protect the rights, freedoms, and liberties that our Founding Fathers deliberated and agonized over, and that colonists went to war to protect. Consider this as you crack open a beer, light the barbecue, toss the Frisbee, and light the fireworks this July 4th holiday—do you really know what you’re celebrating, or is it just another day off work?

If Only There Were Fewer People…

~~Sarcasm ON~~

If only fewer people were alive today, imagine what this country would be like. The “green economy” would be alive and well, people could actually make decent use of solar, wind, and corn-based energies, and a lot of federal administrative headaches would magically be solved, like Social Security, Medicare, and both federal and trade deficits. Imagine the nirvana!

If only those people were self-sufficient, imaginative, and clever enough to devise their own conveniences and technologies, and desired true freedom—to be out of eye-, ear-, and arm-shot of the government. Imagine the progress!

Now imagine this: a crafty century-old-and-evolving social engineering plan to return to the days when there were much fewer people in this country—more intelligent, more inventive, and more reasonable people—that involves a slow and systematic poisoning of the population, through legislation, regulation, reliance on outdated information (or no information at all), lax oversight, and lax enforcement.

Laws are made in this country at all levels without thought, consideration, or even planning for the worst outcomes, especially contrarian ones. Every issue has a flip-side, and that flip-side usually comes back to bite someone in the butt, no matter how undeserving the bite is. Lack of oversight and enforcement can make the bite worse, and so can unforeseen loophole exploitation.

Let’s examine the “ignore the imports” issue: tainted wheat gluten, toothpaste, and toys from China and Mexico. Lax enforcement has left big gaping holes in our port inspection programs, allowing for all kinds of bad food and lead-encrusted toys to come in and poison our population. I guess we couldn’t do a good enough job of thinning the herd here at home, so we had to outsource it. China’s been trying to kill of its own people for centuries to lower expenses, and now it seems they’re exporting the favor. Mexico is no gem to be admired either when it comes to quality of life—battery acid in the water, lead and mercury in the air, and who knows what all else.

Another herd-thinner is medical care. Prescription drugs of the most recent and effective variety are routinely withheld from much of the public due to cost—a cost that the drug companies are reluctant to alleviate, thanks to health insurance coverage. No insurance, no fancy drugs—or sometimes no drugs at all. Then there’s dental care—one good abscess can go straight to your brain, killing you, and yet there’s no national Denticare program. Imagine that!

A third herd-thinner is our food. Commercially-available produce, fresh meats, as well as canned and boxed goods, is tainted in a way all its own—through high-tech pesticides, genetic modification, all manner of preservatives, unsterilized compost-based fertilizers, corner-cutting with tainted feed, and lax inspection. Nobody knows or has ever tested additives to see what they do to us long-term, but we’re seeing them for ourselves through autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, generational obesity, early childhood diabetes, infertility, and numerous birth defects and cancers. Meanwhile, our Food Guide Pyramid is only serving to stuff us with unnecessary foods for a sedentary society, adding to the caloric, fat, and carbohydrate misery—all in the name of food politics. God save the farmers!

Have you checked out the crash test ratings on our cars lately? You might want to take a look at the NTSA (federal) ones, and then compare them to the NIHS (Insurance Institute) ones. For giggles and grins, take a look at the worst-performing car makes and models, and then go look up their gas mileage. We’re being led to conserving ourselves right into death-trap cars—another herd-thinner.

What about terrorism and our porous borders? Well, that’s another herd-thinning issue brought about by lax enforcement. You’d think the power-that-be actually WANTED terrorists to come in here and start slaughtering the masses!

Speaking of terrorism, we’re still reeling from the Twin Towers and Katrina disaster aftermaths, both of which suffer greatly from lax attention and lax follow-through to see where the money’s actually going and where it ended up. Instead of helping to put New Orleans back to rights, much of their money is going toward a huge memorial—somewhere in the $3 billion range. Imagine how many homes, families, and services that future hurricanes and storm surges will wipe out because of badly misused monies! Never mind the trillions that’ve already been poured into the Twin Towers hole, with nothing on the surface to show for it (except “mysteriously” sick and dying emergency workers, and former employees in the nearby vicinities). This is how terrorism and Mother Nature herself have been employed in shaving our human numbers.

Despite all these herd-thinning tactics, we still manage to survive and thrive, albeit with a few complications. With the looming specter of a Democratic president on the horizon, we have “quantum” taxation to look forward to, complete with another herd-thinning tactic—depression of the mental variety. Scores of people who feel there is no hope left, despite all the newly-developed federally-funded programs around to insure they eat, have shelter, and access to some sort of medical care and scutwork job, will endeavor to commit suicide. They just couldn’t go on any more in these conditions. The shell of the person they once were will be too hard to live with.

We used to die off in good time all on our own. Since the invention of vaccines, vitamins, exercise regimens, and organic farming practices, we’re not dying off fast enough, and some of us are carelessly producing more than our fair share of babies for replacements. What’s a government to do, besides beg, borrow, steal, and stoop to clever parlor tricks just to keep the show going and the audience mesmerized? They’ve already tried poisoning the well—improved air and water standards did away with that. Now they lull us into a stupefying sleep with the media, never to re-awaken.

Would we even RECOGNIZE a smoke-and-mirrors act when it’s happening right in front of us? Probably not—the media has done its job well by slackening our jaws, shortening our attention spans, and repetitively spoon-feeding us stuff unfit for a pig.

I can hardly wait for the next herd-thinner to reveal itself. Maybe this one will actually do me in before I get a chance to form a defense strategy and alert my readers.

In spite of all this, there’s already an opposing strategy at work in our pharmacies— refusing to fill birth control and “morning after” pills on pharmacists’ personal religious grounds. As fast as the government tries to kill us off, the church encourages rampant breeding—go figure!

~~Sarcasm OFF~~

In Honor of the Possible Hard Times to Come

I'm re-running my Meat Manifesto article from 2005: http://wenchwisdom.blogspot.com/2005/06/meat-manifesto.html

I'm not suggesting you go cold turkey from turkey itself (or any other meat), but I myself am going to try working my way down from "cuttable" meats (solid pieces) to ground meats, and then to meat substitutes. I'm not sure what it'll do for my weight, but it sure should help the cholesterol picture and future food budget--especially when we're all looking at the eventuality of $4.00+/gallon gasoline.

This move, combined with relocating closer to work, continuing to buy "used", and continuing to buy with cost-per-serving in mind, should see me through whatever awaits me around the economic bend. Sounds very much like something our grandparents and great-grandparents did back in the Depression era, doesn't it?

All I left out was the victory garden--first, I have to get a yard for myself.

Recession or Depression? Either Way, the Sky is Falling on Someone Unprepared

Plenty of people are batting about with the terms “recession”, “depression”, trying to prognosticate what the future holds for us economy-wise. I’ve seen it in chat rooms, forums, individual blogs, and even heard it on CNBC, CNN, Reliable Sources, The Glen Beck Show, and other places.

When I look at the markets (financial and occupational), they’re in a downward trend. When I look at the prices of things used in my daily life, they’re in an upward trend. This gap is growing, and getting more complicated with other things thrown into the mix, like immigration (an upward trend), carbon emissions (an upward trend), and the number of politicians running for office with a grand plan to save us all from ourselves (a currently upward trend)—oh, and let’s not forget the number of soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq (another upward trend).

My cracked crystal ball tells me that we’ve been in a cleverly-disguised recession for some time, and it may possibly bottom out into a full-blown depression, unless Mr. Bernanke and his cronies at the Federal Reserve start juggling both balls and plates at double the current speed—so far, they’ve managed to engineer a “soft landing” for the economy, meaning that they found a way to stave off much of the pain households would feel if given all the bad news at once.

Should we actually find ourselves at the doorstep of depression, we probably won’t know it—the last time around, the government was fresh off the gold standard and new to the idea of printing money willy-nilly. Nowadays, the government thinks nothing of printing money faster than the ink will dry, hence the availability of easy credit, risky loans, and a stagnant prime rate. For all we know, we could be in a depression RIGHT NOW. This is what “full faith and credit” has given us—a faith-based economy, for lack of a better phrase.

The sky fell on the unfortunate bottom-rung dwellers of the working class some time ago, as witnessed by the number of new social benefit recipients (an upward trend), the number of public transportation users (an upward trend), and the number of home foreclosures throughout the country (still an ongoing trend). Some would even include the number of severe obesity cases (an upward trend).

The sky also fell on another demographic: those who believe wholeheartedly in the “green” movement and the escalating doom (real or imagined) from greenhouse gases and carbon emissions. Such political and economic high hopes were placed in alternative means to an end, only to be dashed back into reality when the truth came to light. So many place so much faith in a “green economy” as a means to future growth in this country—and they may indeed be right one day. For the near term, though, this is still pie-in-the-sky fantasy thinking. There are too many of us, too spread out, and dependent on too many appliances to ever make anything besides oil and gas an efficient way to fuel our lifestyles. Maybe the first depression dwellers could have made ample use of solar panels, wind turbines, and ethanol, but there are just too many hurdles today.

So what can we learn from the LAST depression? Lots--for example, the first go-round was dragged out (for about 9 years) and made worse by our own government’s New Deal. Just as the last depression was global, so too will this one become, and it will spur the equivalent amount of socialist- and communist-style bailout thinking and program-forming as the last one did (maybe more). Also, farmers made out the best of all the occupational fields, because of their self-sufficiency—they were the top of the heap when it came to food availability and lifestyle. When others had to cut to the bone for survival, those who were mostly or wholly self-sufficient came out the winners.

While we were cutting and bleeding our way through those lean years, the government invented “make work” projects—our national highway system and roadways came from it. Many a bridge, tunnel, dam, and nuclear power plant were built as a result of these projects. All this ushered us right into WWII—another leg up in what would become our greatest economic boom and expansion ever. Nothing revs up an economy like a spanking-good war (think Iraq here), and all those jobs in the defense industry were just the trick. After all, this is where Rosie the Riveter got her start.

While Rosie was at work, and Daddy off to war, the kids had to be cared for by someone else, right? This led to the invention of kindergarten, the hiring of additional teachers, and eventually led to daycare centers for modern-day “Rosies”, helping pave the way for the feminist movement and equal (and some unequal) rights for women.

The depression also forced our federal reserve banks to tinker with the country’s money controls to insure we didn’t slip back into another depression, or have to endure another one any time soon. But the Fed (in all its glory) doesn’t have any control over things like currency markets and the market value of our dollar (a downward trend), the Chinese suddenly stopping their enormous and constant purchases of U.S. bonds (another downward trend), or the bottom dropping out of the real estate market due to record numbers of foreclosures from bad loans given to good people (another downward trend). The Fed also cannot control what we pay at the gas pump, in the grocery store, or at the mall (an upward trend), just as it cannot control whether or not you have a job in the morning (unless you work for Uncle Sam in some capacity—then, you will likely have a job, and will still be paid regardless of national economic hardships).

What ELSE can we learn from the last depression? To never discount or turn away an elderly relative’s “war stories” or survival stories from that era. These people are the only tie we have to what actually happened back then, and what needs to happen now. Thank God some of them wrote books chronicling their accounts of life during such hard times, so that we can read and learn from them—their generation is dying off so fast, while new generations are growing up so fast (with lofty and unreasonable expectations for themselves and of you).

If we actually find ourselves hitting bottom again as a national economy, the best we can do is exactly what our ancestors did—be as self-sufficient as we can. This means going beyond paper things (like money, coupons, etc.) and holding a few hard assets—things you can barter with if the need arises. After all, what good is money when it’s worthless (or locked up in a defunct bank), or coupons when you can’t afford to get to the store, of if the store itself (or even the item manufacturer) is out of business?

So many of us are still living like there’s no tomorrow, and in my humble opinion, not doing enough to live TRULY frugally—by that, I mean reliance on convenience items just for the sake of convenience. Many people’s comfort levels need a serious adjusting downward if they’re going to have a hope of making it in the future (if indeed we experience a depression).

For those of you who already have made adjustments, lowered expectations, raised personal monetary effectiveness, and have even taught your children the new sense of reality, this possible “coming storm” will be weathered easily—you won’t have to make drastic preparations or suffer like the last depression generation. It will have already been done (gently, with grace and dignity) through black-belt frugal living skills. Once you have hit rock-bottom, you can’t go any lower.

There are just too many “downward trends” in my mind for a favorable outcome in the near term future, so I’m not holding my breath. I’m making adjustments instead. Even if we don’t actually hit bottom in the economic life cycle, it’ll be good to know I can do better and live even more frugally than I am at this moment. After all, the Roaring 20’s were enough for people to let their financial guard down from the frugal Victorian era, and our “roaring 90’s” did pretty much the same thing for us. The party had to come to an end some time—and our time may be now.

I am no economist, but it didn’t take an economics degree to see all those downward trends. While the TV tries to bamboozle you with unnecessary “fuzz” like housing starts, mortgage applications, and the Fed funds rate, the real meat of meaningful consumer economics stares you in the face daily—in the classifieds and unemployment offices, in line at the local social service office, in the parking lot at Wally World, at the gas pumps, on the grocery store shelves, in the mail, and at the numerous campaign stops politicians make, all the while promising to bandage our self-inflicted social and monetary wounds with fix-all nanny-state programs. The NEW New Deal is just one Democratic presidential candidate winner away--we are dooming ourselves by repeating history.

The mantra of the last depression was “use it up, wear it out, make due, or do without.” If you’re relying on Uncle Sam to save you, don’t bother—he’s the one that got you INTO this, and he has only one trick for getting you out…at great cost, just like the LAST depression’s bailout programs! Remember it was only this year we finally stopped paying the Spanish-American war debt tax on our land-line phones--imagine how long it'll take to stop paying for the LAST depression's progams!

As with the “boom” that followed the last bust, I can’t help but wonder what’s on the other side of this possible economic bust. Another boom, assuredly, but what will it look like? What will it be made from? Who will take part in it? What will it make of us?

Will we become known as "the second greatest generation" because we weathered a new depression, a new war, and what's shaping up to be a Drought Bowl?

Rattling the Political Chain of Command

We’ve pretty much all heard, and some of us have even followed through, about contacting our senators and Congress-critters if we want something done about a specific problem—or just wish to sway the hearts and minds of those involved in the legislative process.

Perhaps you’d even like to join them by assembling a “political aspirations portfolio” of skills and starting at the bottom—the school board.

Rather than picking up the phone, fax, or signing onto the web, there’s a more efficient way. This knowledge is necessary, because it affects who sees or hears the problem, and how it gets handled from there. Lots of times, a direct leap from home ground to the top of the food chain does no good, and I wish people like Lou Dobbs and others would recognize it and instruct us correctly on how to EFFECTIVELY register a complaint or bring an issue to light.

I’d like to give a big thanks to Neal Boortz, who brought this to my attention in his most recent book Somebody’s Gotta Say It—while being far from Lou Dobbs in political views and social issues, he wizened us all on the correct way to enlighten our politicians without jumping links in the chain of command.

In government, chain of command is important. Without it, there’d be complete chaos. Link-jumpers cause chaos and only serve to slow down progress and sidetrack our poor elected human beings from their original mission.

Just like in the navy, if a particular issue or situation comes up that could affect morale, safety, or the well-being of the ship (and/or crew) as a whole, a “chit” (official form of notice) is filled out and given to the supervisor, who in turn gives it HIS supervisor, and on up the chain it goes until someone with official capacity for dealing with the problem or situation notifies the originator of the chit. A person-to-person meeting is held, either between the originator and the highest supervisor reached in the chain (sometimes the commander himself), or the originator and all parties who signed off on the chit while it was climbing the chain. This way, there isn’t just one person, too busy or distracted, to take in the information then promptly forget it—there is a human trail AND a paper trail.

Neal Boortz tells us that the most effective complaint registration, or simply informing your elected officials about how you feel on certain issues, is to start at the bottom—the way the legislative branch is designed to work. This is the order in which it goes:

Step 1: Write down your issue or complaint so it makes sense, and is easily read by the elected official. Think of it as a resume’—the more brief and concise, the less likely it is to end up in the trash can. Leave out emotional rhetoric, and stick to the facts. Elected officials don’t have time for histrionics, and certainly don’t have time to weed out the actual issue from the inflammatory bluster.

Step 2: Start at the bottom—your LOCAL branches of government. This is because the political system was designed to start locally electing representatives, who in turn VOTE FOR YOU up the chain of political command. This is why link-jumping doesn’t work most of the time.

Step 3: Get enough of your friends, family, and whoever else shares your views/opinions/concerns to join you in the LOCAL writing campaign—this will surely get the attention of your local politicians, who forward things upward, and can help sway a vote or generate legislation.

Step 4: Lather, rinse, repeat. DO NOT MESS WITH FEDERAL CONGRESS-CRITTERS DIRECTLY.

Our system was supposed to run largely from an assembly of local voices—government BY and FOR the people. Money and special interest groups have taken over, and we need to take it back. Using it correctly, we can begin making ourselves heard once again, and this is done only by following the chain of command—local representatives, who have the ear of state representatives, and in turn have the ear of Congress and the White House. Getting more people (through proper channels) on board with your concerns only increases the likelihood that something will get done about them—think “snowball effect.” Keeping your local representatives updated on any changes in facts or the situation itself only serves to bolster support and keeps your political chain of command informed for a more satisfactory outcome.

Our federal level of representation was never meant to have contact with the voters directly, and all these haphazard “write your Congressman” campaigns only serve to gum up the legislative works. The voters elect state and local representatives, and the Electoral College elects the president, regardless of who is on your voting ballot. To sway the federal tier, the House and Senate rely on contact from state and local officials—not the individual voter himself. Mere complaints (especially those that could’ve been handled at lower levels) almost assuredly get tossed, while issues raised from proper channels will get a quick glance at worst, and 100% personal involvement at best.

We all want personal involvement from our federal-level officials, don’t we? It’s time we all learned how to best capture and hold their attention…through PROPER channels. Start making your own human trails and paper trails for that snowball effect—remember, the bigger the snowball, the better the results will be for you.

Nobody ever said politics was easy. Correct political etiquette is even harder.