My Evil Twin Brother

The Final Health Care Solution

The United States faces a health care conundrum. Our heath care costs currently exceed 16% of our Gross National Product (GDP), one of the highest rates in the world. But efforts to rehabilitate the health care system in America has run into formidable, oftentimes hyperbolic resistance. The crux of most dissenting arguments has been that the cost of the fix, by most accounts around a trillion dollars, simply overwhelms the savings to be found by repairing the system. At this point it seems our best hope is that we are left with the lesser of the two costly evils.

But a solution is already in our midst. And it comes from an unlikely source, the sage of the Alaskan tundra, Sarah Palin. Last year, the former Alaskan governor suggested that the federal government might be setting up “death panels” to decide who does and does not get health coverage, and therefore who lives and who dies. Ostensibly, the claim was made to inflame the hardcore ultra-conservative masses, already torqued into an anti-Obama rage by cable news, in order to further her political career. Although she subsequently backpedaled on her claim, the genius of her suggestion had already been laid bare. The Final Health Care Solution was born.

These panels would exist to identify and eliminate the waste presently dragging Medicare and Social Security into insolvency. A typical death panel hearing could reduce the taxpayer burden by millions of dollars simply by speeding up the aging process to its natural conclusion. Much like the movie Logan’s Run, terminally ill patients can be launched into the air and vaporized for our amusement. But why wait for the patients to become terminal? Surely the very elderly, with their attendant laundry list of medications and doctor’s appointments, could reach a pre-set monetary threshold upon whose passing the patient would then be fed to the Sarlacc. Besides removing the burden on the taxpayer, the upkeep for the poor Sarlacc would be dropped to virtually nothing. Its a win win!

But who should man these panels? These unenviable positions demand men and women virtually devoid of sympathy. They would need the rare gift of not just callousness, but also cruelty to their fellow man. Of course I’m talking about game show hosts. Simon Cowell, Anne Robinson, and a seemingly endless list of cruel, twisted Japanese game show hosts can be counted on to cull the herds of sick and infirm. Much like deer populations who exceed the sustainable level of their environment, Medicare rolls can be pared down ruthlessly in order to bring their number down to a level that the taxpaying public can be comfortable supporting. Or if the sitting U.S. President decides that another war is in order, more death panels can be seated to clear up space in the budget. Simply put, the business of America cannot afford to not embrace these panels!

The well debate

BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well suffered a catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20. Two days later it sank to sea floor, apparently serving as a burial at sea for eleven missing men who were never accounted for after the accident. Of even greater concern however is the uncontrolled oil leak that is spewing from the broken riser pipe that once carried the oil to the rig. Official estimates peg the leak at 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf, but the estimates are simply best guesses. The leak could be far worse. Oil has already washed up onshore in Louisiana, threatening to wipe out the livelihoods of shrimpers, fishermen, and oyster harvesters.

The tragic accident has galvanized both supporters and critics of offshore drilling. Critics, such as Sen. Bill Nelson – (D) Florida, were quick to call for a halt to further offshore development, citing the danger to the environment and the maritime economy. Supporters point to the long history of accident free drilling in the Gulf. Currently there are 3,858 oil rigs operating there, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yet the last time there was a significant oil spill in the Gulf was 1979, when Ixtoc_1 dumped over 450,000 barrels of crude into the ocean. Still, smaller oil spills have happened since then, but managed to stay under the public’s radar.

President Obama has ordered a temporary halt to further exploration until the reason for this blowout is pinpointed and the administration can feel confident that this accident couldnt happen again with the other existing wells in the Gulf. But given that nobody even has a clue what caused the BOP (blowout preventer) to malfunction, its possible the halt could extend for months or even years. In a perfect world we wouldnt need to depend on oil for our energy consumption needs, but until then the Gulf of Mexico petroleum bounty is vital to America’s economy. Even more critical than stopping the oil geyser on the bottom of the ocean, is quickly finding out why that geyser exists in the first place. Offshore drilling, as dirty and dangerous as it is, can not be stopped because it can not be replaced. Until it can we will have to continue to drill, and hope that the BP Deepwater Horizon is the last major oil spill in America.

Tea, or coffee?

The Tea Party movement took off like a rocket last year as conservative anger over President Obama’s health care reform agenda bubbled over. Touching the populist nerve in many repressed Reagan republicans, Tea Party members vented their disappointment in what they see as the administration’s socialist leanings. Unfortunately, some of this venting has taken on secessionist and racial overtones. All of which has driven the wedge between left and right even further. Thus the Coffee Party was born, in an effort to bring civil, and hopefully bipartisan, discourse back to political debate. The coffee parties typically meet in a coffee house, and members sit and calmly discuss current affairs between members of any party or with any viewpoint. I suppose they do so with their pinkies appropriately in the air. But all of this attention to politcal niceties begs the question, how civil was politics in the past? After all, in this age of the internet and cable news, politics must be dirtier than ever, right?

Historian Joseph Cummins published a book dealing with that very subject in 2007. Titled, Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises (read an interview with the author by Melissa Lafsky of the New York Times), Cummins argues that not only are politics no dirtier now than in the past, they may actually be cleaner. The same internet and cable news that gives such a prominent platform to all this mudslinging also keeps the do-badders and potential do-badders squarely in the crosshairs of an open and free press. I.e. – All of these mudslingers have to keep their mudslinging to a minimum, lest they become targets themselves. So why the sudden concern with civility? Could it be that we have become too sensitive? Too PC? It used to be accepted that politics was dirty.

Because of the universal access provide by cable and the internet, today’s mudslinging is now available to anybody with a computer or a television. Thus the sheer numbers available to grassroots organizations are exponentially higher than anytime in America’s history. Like minded folk have the ability to connect literally at the touch of a button thanks to Facebook. While all of this connecting and commiserating is certainly a boon to fledgling political movements, it also casts open wide the gates to, shall we say, the lowest common denominator of behavior. “Hits” are hard to come by without controversial and provocative posts. Plus we have to account for “gang-mentality”, whereby otherwise decent people support, take part in , or even direct behavior that they would normally avoid simply because of peer pressure. In short, in connecting all of us, cable and the internet have succeeded in creating “hive” mentalities, whereby masses of people subjugate their own independent thought to be part of a “greater” collective. And sometimes that collective thought is driven by fear, paranoia, and even hate. So the efforts of the Coffee Party are certainly needed, but not because politics is dirtier than it used to be, but because it is more dangerous.

The Republicans had their chance

Health Care reform is upon us, having finally passed throught the Senate amid contentious surroundings. With hundreds of demonstrators camped outside voicing their disapproval, the House of Representatives voted 219-212 in favor of the bill. Prior to the vote, various congressmen had been subjected to outrageous verbal assaults by the enraged crowd. This follows months of heated rhetoric from town hall meetings and cable television talking heads. Why all the vitriol over a reform package that even the republicans admit is needed? Erstwhile conservative strategist Karl Rove published a column in the Wall Street Journal outlining several key conservative ideas regarding health care reform. These ideas are well thought out and deserve consideration. So the question is why? Why didnt the republicans attempt their own version of health care reform when they had the chance? For eight years the Bush administration controlled the executive and legislative branches of government (and many would also argue they controlled the judicial branch as well). Yet they never made a single attempt at substantial health care reform. Now they are forced to sit and stew as the democrats celebrate the passage of their version.

Clearly President Bush discovered, as did President Clinton before him, while researching the possibility of introducing health care legislation, that this kind of broad governmental intervention into such a divisive political area is not the stuff that re-elections are made of. Bush did introduce a republican friendly bill in 2004 and again floated the idea for health care reform during his State of the Union address in 2007, but he quietly allowed both to die without consideration. Bush and Clinton, who at least proposed legislation if only to quickly conceed defeat, lacked the politcal will to push health care reform though Congress.

President Obama knew the penalty he would face for taking on such a daunting fight, but he did not capitulate. But he has paid a steep price for his success. His popularity with the american people, once very high, has now plummetted. The remainder of his current term will undoubtedly be spent rebuilding his lost political capital before the next elections. Given the current climate, that looks to be a Herculean task. But love him or hate him and his politics, it cannot be denied that he has exhibited tremendous courage and will power to see this bill through to the end. And that cannot be said of his predecessors.

Its the end of the world as we know it…

Haiti, Chile, Turkey, Chile again, Chile yet again. The world seems to be fracturing at an alarming rate lately. And it has a certain segment of society in quite the state of agitation. And why not? In the last two months alone, over 200,000 people have lost their lives to earthquakes around the globe. But scientists have been quick to point out that, on average, there are over 130 earthquakes a year between 6.0 and 6.9. The vast majority of these quakes go unreported because they cause little to no damage. The problem, it appears, is that lately some of those earthquakes have been hitting populated regions. In other words, it isn’t that there are more earthquakes, its that there are too many people living on fault lines. That’s a problem certain to increase as the world’s population continues to boom. But it doesn’t portend the end of the world.

Naturally, your diehard fire-and-brimstone, repent-the-end-is-nigh types aren’t too happy to hear this. As an olive branch to my tin-foil hatted brethren I offer these five alternatives for them to hang their doomsday hopes on.

5. A black man is President of the United States. – Well, he’s half black, but that still counts. What’s more there are lots of folks who still think that Obama is (gasp) a muslim! Apparently he’s trying to perform jihad from the inside out (natch). Had Obama been a woman we’d certainly all be a pile of cinders already.

4. Its no secret that civil liberties have taken a beating since 9/11. The Patriot Act, quickly signed into law shortly after the worst terrorist attack on American soil, gives law enforcement officials nearly unfettered access to anybody’s telephone, email, text, medical, and financial records. Privacy has been further eroded by the installation of whole body imaging scanners at airport security checkpoints all over the country. That means $11/hr mouth breathers will get to see you nekkid. The prophesies of George Orwell, though twenty-six years late, are spiraling towards reality, driven by wild fears of random attacks by madmen. Practice your Newspeak, you’ll need it soon enough.

3. Social Security is already paying out more money than its bringing in. The funding mechanisms meant to bankroll social security will be completely exhausted by 2036. Unless we institute dramatic reforms to the elderly care system in this country, most Americans will be burdened with caring for their elderly parents as well as their own children. Discretionary income will drop to nothing, the economy will melt down, and in an explosion of underfunded glory the United States will disappear under mountains of defaulted IOU’s.

2. The Hadron supercollider has entered into service. Currently it is only functioning at partial power while teams of scientists calibrate the machine. It wont be tested at full power until 2013. It is then that the earth will be sucked into a baby black hole, birthed by the collision of two protons inside the belly of the supercollider. Humor yourself with the knowledge that Rosie O’Donnell and Ann Coulter will ever so briefly occupy the same point in space and time before their atoms implode into a fine red mist.

1. The Academy Awards ceremony bestowed the Best Picture Oscar to independent darling The Hurt Locker instead of box-office obliterating Avatar. What? When Hollywood elitists start making decisions based on quality instead of money then that is certainly a sign of the apocalypse.