"remember Dine'..."

A post by Shopman on a Tennesseee Republican Party posting gave me this thought...

http://democratsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/02/tenn-republican-party.html

We don't suffer from racial divides, unless we are unable to frame our objections to something in any other way!

As we sit to think about the inequities we see, it is very easy to lay blame at the feet of the stranger in our midst. The blame lies with the unequal treatment of people by our goverment. As much as we have tried to right a wrong by changing this and changing that, all we've done is come up with a confusing hodge-podge of rules and regulations that must be followed.

                                             Dine'

Whether an insurance company pays a bill or not, everything your Doctor or hospital does is paid. The expense you see on your doctor or hospital bill is a direct result of an unpaid bill from an insurance company or an uninsured consumer.

Look at it this way. If you are running a market, and 30% of your customers are "samplers", ruining or consuming products as they shop, then that loss must be added onto the cost of doing business. In order to maintain a profit margin, you have to divide the loss by every item you have in the market and add it to the price of each item. Society ends up paying for everything that is consumed and not paid for.

We are getting some good ideas going on the Health care issue, and I was looking through some old posts on Health Care. I'm sure bteppmd is very busy, but he took the time to write his thoughts out to 101 ideas. See if any of these turn your wheels, and what you think we could add to the mix... it's a long post, you may want to digest it a few ideas at a time.

Link

Thanks, Karen

From the Lincoln Journal Star... Have a smile, and enjoy!

Chambers sues God in protest of another lawsuit

By NATE JENKINS / The Associated Press Monday, Sep 17, 2007 - 06:41:04 pm CDT

Fed up with the threats, tired of natural disasters, the state’s longest-serving state senator is using his legal muscle against who he says is the culprit — God. State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha sued the Almighty in Douglas County District Court last week. Chambers, who skips morning prayers during the legislative session and often criticizes Christians, said he filed the lawsuit to show that anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody. That, he said, was recently illustrated by a federal lawsuit he said triggered his lawsuit against God. Tory Bowen, 24, sued a state judge who barred the words “rape” and “victim,” among other terms, in the trial of Pamir Safi, who Bowen says sexually assaulted her. Bowen said Lancaster District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront violated her free speech rights. Chambers said Bowen’s lawsuit is inappropriate because the Nebraska Supreme Court has already considered the case and federal courts follow the decisions of state supreme courts on state matters. “This lawsuit having been filed and being of such questionable merit creates a circumstance where my lawsuit is appropriately filed,” Chambers said. “People might call it frivolous but if they read it they’ll see there are very serious issues I have raised.” U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, in an order last week, expressed doubts about whether Bowen’s lawsuit “has any legal basis whatsoever” and said sanctions may be imposed against Tory Bowen, the accuser, and her attorneys if they fail to show cause for the lawsuit. The Associated Press usually does not identify accusers in sex-assault cases, but Bowen has allowed her name to be used publicly because of the issue over the judge’s language restrictions. Cheuvront declared a mistrial in Safi’s trial in July, saying pretrial publicity made it impossible to gather enough impartial jurors. Chambers says in his lawsuit that God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents, inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” Chambers also says God has caused “fearsome floods ... horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes.” He’s seeking a permanent injunction against God.

From  Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1966

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982)

I have seen many articles over the past few years decrying the loss of jobs to other countries. Many of those articles cited things like cheap labor and less EPA regulation. The recent lead paint debacle underscores the need for us to do something about this problem. Let's change the way our import duties are collected. If your product is produced in a safe environment, with proper pollution control, and a living wage according to the economy of the country your business is located in, you are allowed to sell your product in the United States with no extra money out of pocket. If you don't want to be safe for your workers, or the world, we will make sure you don't endanger us and we will make it very expensive for you to sell your product to your most lucrative customers.

If we do, we not only make companies outsourcing jobs from America think twice, we make the companies who have chosen to risk so much think even harder. Greed that endangers lives is not relief, and not something any of us want to be associated with. We have a new terrorist in town, folks. We buy our children's toys and our food on trust. We cannot tolerate the corners being cut by business. It is no relief to worry about whether you or I will have to deal with illness, loss of time, possible permanent disability because someone has decided that America is too expensive.

Another plank for the Platform of Relief....

Tune in tomorrow. 

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.

Lin Yutang

This makes me think of the need to toss that piece of junk mail, or the magazine article I mean to read, but never get to it, so it clutters up my whole system...

I look to the possibilities of elimination of non-essential duplication in government. We fall into a very sticky wicket of asking people to change their livelihood. It is one thing to ask them to do it for the sake of all of us, but is it fair to just ask them to leave after many years of service?

Streamlining then, necessarily has to fall within the confines of our platform of relief, and we cannot have one without the other.  Universal Health Care offers the people of our nation a chance to follow other avenues of volunteerism (which relieves non-profits), part-time work, and small business endeavors. A Save the Earth initiative will provide jobs for some of the remaining workers.

Quality of life is an elusive goal, one medical science has yet to master, having learned most of the mechanics of our bodies. Quality of life should also be a goal of our government, looking to the best uses of each dollar. Our platform of relief should include ways to see that we aren't duplicating goods and services so that we can give as much to each of our tenets of relief that we can.

Make sure you have your voice heard by your local movers and shakers, because they will be the ones who influence the platform. Make the platform something ready to go by the time everyone looks at our candidate. We can't have a win without both in agreement.

I read this article by Leonard Pitts, Jr. this morning, and was intrigued and encouraged by the way the problems got solved.

Once again, we are reminded that dumping a lot of money into a lot of space and expecting it to sort itself out is not how problems are solved. The original objective apparently was to spend as little as possible by building a large amount of apartments in one area.

This article about the final solution shows that people need to have needs met on several fronts, including the feeling of being part of something wonderful.

 Enjoy this as much as I did, the link is to the Miami Herald.

Link

Ahhh.... relief.