Tuesday, November 24, 2009

it's beginning to look a lot like Russia

It seems that a normal person can't breathe (or cough) these days without being charged with doing something illegal. Here around Washington, DC there are cops on every corner, cameras at every intersection, and brown shirt citizens who delight in ratting out their neighbor. People here are meaner than what I'm used to, both in southside Virginia and in supposedly uptight Yankee Maine. They cut you off in parking lots for the last spot, push their grocery carts in front of yours without a glance, and glare at you if they have to slow down to allow your passel of children to cross the street.

But our elected representatives show understanding, or do they? It becomes more apparent every day that politicians consider themselves above the plight of the common man. They exempted themselves for many years from paying into the Social Security Ponzi scheme and now exempt themselves from the same medical rationing bill they are trying to force down the throat of the American people. They block traffic for hours so they can buy groceries, and both here and in California they don't even obey the traffic laws.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -
The Web site TMZ.com on Monday posted photographs of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger getting into a silver convertible Porsche in a red zone, where no stopping, standing or parking is allowed. The celebrity site says the violation occurred Saturday in Beverly Hills.
The city typically issues a $90 citation to red zone violators.
The governor apparently didn't learn from his wife's mistake. Last month, Shriver was caught on video parking her Cadillac Escalade in a red zone in Santa Monica.
That tape surfaced after several other videos showed Shriver holding a cell phone while driving, another violation of California law.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I agree with you about the United States looking more and more like Russia.
But, Russia from the 1980s, where people had to wait in line for toilet paper, and trade shoes for smoked sausages and cartons of cigarettes.
But, I disagree with you about the public option.
If you're unemployed (like me, my father, my brother and my brother in law) your unemployment checks don't cover the cost of COBRA and rent.
I pay rent. I don't have health care. I would LOVE to see a doctor, but I can't.
The United States should be on a single payer system, like most of Europe.
It's really sad that Latvia has a better health care system than we do in the United States.
Yeah. Latvia. Ex-occupied Russian territory -- has better healthcare than the United States.

kat said...

I wanted to allow this person (who won't be courageous enough to identify themselves) to publish his/her statement so I could show the utter stupidity of their argument.

You say that you and 3 members of your family are unemployed and deserve health coverage. I understand that with almost 20% real unemployment there are many folks out there who are out of work for legitimate reasons but I wan under the impression that if you don't have a job then you have to scale back your expenses. That means that you can't see the doctor unless it is an emergency, you have to cancel cable TV and internet... You seem to want the financial benefits of the employed, but the lifestyle of the unemployed.

I also don't think you understand the economics of medicine. Doctors spend 12-16 years in training so they can provide a service people are willing to pay for. They might have a love for people, a desire to help, BUT, they need to feed their families and deserve a lifestyle that matches the risk they take. It is amazing and appalling that a person thinks that they deserve a service and don't have to pay for it. If I walk into a store that sells pools, travel, electronics, etc. I can only purchase a product if I have the money in my bank account. Why do people think that they don't have to pay for medical care? Doctors, nurses, hospitals, staff, suppliers, and pharmacutical companies are supposed to work for free? Be slaves of the state for everyone else's benefit?

As for this "so-and-so ex-Communist country has better health care than the US garbage, I just ask one question: Do people all over the world travel to Latvia to get their cancer surgeries, their chemo, their heart bypasses, their transplants? The answer would be NO. If you compare apples and oranges you can come up with any statistic you want, but many of these countries don't keep good records. An example is infant mortality: European countries don't count babies under a certain weight or age that dies as a live birth, we do. They don't count babies over a certain age as infants, we do. The amount of time before treatment begins is far shorter and the life expectancy after treatment is longer in the US than in countries which have socialized medicine. Just because someone has "coverage" doesn't mean diddly squat if they have to wait months and years to even be seen.

The entitlement mentality of this commenter and many Americans is just evidence of how soft our nation has become. Can we imagine our pioneer ancestors crying and whining over this stuff? No, they chopped down the trees, cut the sod, built their own homes, cooked over an open fire, birthed their own children, and did their own doctoring. The founders never anticipated the desire of Americans to be dependant on their government for every morsel of food and a roof over their head. That we should even be considering/debating this monstrosity of a health tax bill is just absurd at all.