How to Pay For Health Care

    One of the sideshows that has caught my attention during the never ending debate over health care reform is the dialogue that has come from a number of sources.  In a nutshell some are complaining that it is really those no good, low life, lazy, fat, cigarette smoking, diabetic people that are the cause of high health care costs for all of us perfect people.  So I've been thinking about that and I'd like to propose some creative initiatives to lessen the burden across the board and to make sure that everyone is paying their fair share.

    Let's start with the most obvious target, smokers.  As we all know by now smoking has been named as a main cause of many health hazards including lung cancer, emphysema, high blood pressure, and erectile dysfunction.  And so it would stand to reason that people who smoke should pay some sort of premium to offset the cost of their health care and I would have no argument with that.  But the fact is that in most states smokers already pay all kinds of taxes on tobacco products to the point that state taxes alone can run between $3 and $5 per pack of cigarettes.  So smokers are already paying more than their fair share.

    Here's the problem though.  If health care is the issue than all of those tobacco taxes should be going to offset the cost of health care and not be going into a general fund that is used to support bridge and road reconstruction.  Does that make any sense?  Do smokers wear out bridges faster than non smokers?  Of course not.  As Step 1, I therefore propose putting all that tax money where it belongs.

    But that brings me to the non smokers.  Non smokers frequently whine, nag, and try to coerce smokers into stopping smoking.  They constantly remind them that smoking is a disgusting habit, that it destroys their health and can even lead to erectile dysfunction.  All of this whining and nagging can lead smokers to suffer from low self esteem.  It can cause depression, anxiety and other mental health issues that frequently lead to more physical health problems.  As a result, whining, nagging non smokers directly increase our health care costs.

    Now it would be impossible to identify which non smokers are naggers and which are not but I think it's safe to assume that most are self righteous enough to have caused mental health issues for someone along the way.  I therefore propose as Step 2 that whenever anyone purchases anything at a store where tobacco products are sold and if they refuse to purchase any tobacco products, they should be assessed a health care tax of $3.15.

    Next we have the exercise crowd.  Their claim is that sedentary lifestyles lead to obesity, heart problems, high blood pressure and erectile dysfunction.  And I think they are probably right.  So here's Step 3.  Let's have a tax of $10/week for everyone who cannot demonstrate a valid membership in a local fitness center.  And, to avoid the tax, you must be able to demonstrate that you actually work out a minimum of 5 times per week.  You can't just belong to a club.  In fact the tax on people who belong to a club but never work out will be doubled just because people like that just annoy others by lying about working out and that annoyance can lead to significant mental health problems in those they annoy.

    Then there is alcohol consumption.  Numerous studies in the United States have indicated that the consumption of two glasses of red wine every day is good for your heart.  In Europe, similar studies have demonstrated the same results for the consumption of four 12 oz servings of beer.  Therefore I propose as Step 4 that you will be taxed $5 for each day that you do not consume at least two glasses of wine or four 12 oz beers.  Of course there will be an exemption for people who can definitively prove that they are bonafide alcoholics.  However, keep in mind that if you can prove that you are a non drinking alcoholic you will then be placed in the same category as non smokers and therefore be required to pay a minimum health tax of $200/yr.

    Now we turn to sexual activity.  According to research having 30 minutes of sex with your partner at least twice a week reduces the risk of fatal heart attacks in both men and women by 50%.  And due to its very nature it helps prevent erectile dysfunction.  So here's Step 5.  Twice a week and you're good.  Once a week, you owe $5.  Not even once, you owe $10.  And just to be clear sex with yourself does not count.  You must have a consenting adult partner to give you a hand...so to speak...and no I don't mean to clap to acknowledge any solo performance.

    I'll be back with more on this topic but I think this is a pretty good start in assuring fairness for all.

Airport Security

    My wife and I recently took a trip from New York to Florida.  The security measures taken in boarding an airplane continue to astound me.  My major problems are removing my belt and removing my shoes.  Removing my belt is at least somewhat instructional since now I know what it feels like to be in the pants of some young rapper wannabe.  I had to concentrate a little to keep my pants from ending up down by my ankles but it wasn't that horrible.  Actually I think the real reason they make people remove their belts is so that they won't hang themselves from the frustration of standing in all those check in lines.

    What is horrible as well as disgusting and plain stupid is requiring people to remove their shoes.  For years I have wished that instead of having some jerk trying to hide a bomb in his shoe it should have been some woman trying to hide one in her bra.  It would have made checking in far more interesting.  Instead of arriving two hours in advance to watch people remove their shoes, I for one would have arrived days in advance just to watch women remove their tops and bras.  It might not all be good but hey.

    And by the way why is that after the underwear bomber set his groin on fire we are not required to take off our underwear?  Good thing he wasn't wearing a thong because you know those things can slip through the cracks.

    It was recently suggested to me (and I wish I could take credit for this) that instead of having people remove their shoes, we should have everyone pass through a detonating chamber.  That would be cool!!  No matter what orifice some asshole had a bomb hidden in they'd be gone at the snap of my fingers.  I've given some thought to how these detonating chambers should be designed.  First, they should be sound proof but not too sound proof.  I would like to hear at least a little of the poof or bang that would happen right at the moment that he or she would be sent to their 72 or 1,072 or whatever number of virgins they're supposed to be greeted by.  I couldn't care less how many they get just as long as they're no longer among the living on this planet.  Which leads me to ask something I've wondered about for a long time.  Do female suicide bombers also get 72 virgins when they martyr themselves?  Do they consider that to be a good thing or a further sacrifice for the cause?  Come on folks, give me the female perspective on this.

    Other important design features of a detonating chamber is that it should be easy to clean, leak proof, and probably equipped with a garbage disposal unit.  I would also suggest neutral colors and no grout joints.

    I recognize that passing through a detonating chamber might add a little time to passing through security but then again emptying pockets, removing belts, removing shoes and then reversing the process is not exactly a speedy operation.  Personally I'd prefer to remain in an upright position as opposed to having some fat ass stuck in my face while the person in front of me tries to either secure or unsecure the heel of their shoe.  I also found it to be curious that after completing the inspection a hand sanitizer was made available.  Huh?  What would be more worthwhile would be to have some kind of foot disinfectant.  In Florida the floors appeared to be fairly clean but in LaGuardia it was obvious that there were bacteria and fungi that had been on the floor for so long that they had developed the ability to speak in complete sentences (English and Spanish).

    Folks, there has to be a better way.  I confess that I don't have all the answers but how about a little profiling.  Let's face it, no matter what we do it's all a matter of odds and and even the most sensitive among us has to admit that the odds of being blown up or hijacked by a 65 year old grey haired woman are much lower than a bearded, dark skinned, Arab looking 20 year old male with a fuse hanging out of his sneaker.

Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?

    A week or so ago there was an article in the local newspaper about a car accident that occured on a nearby parkway.  Fortunately there were no serious injuries or fatalities.  As it turns out the accident was caused by a 19 year old driver and he had been drinking alcohol.  So he was given the usual array of charges which as I recall numbered about five.  That's the way it goes these days.  No one is ever charged with let's say shoplifting.  Instead the charges will be shoplifting, possession of stolen property, petit larceny in the second degree, possession of an unstamped letter to be mailed and therefore postal fraud, and wearing white after Labor Day in the third degree.  It's as if police and prosecutors have come to realize that if they throw enough shit on the wall at least some of it will stick.

    Anyway, upon further investigation the police found that the 19 year old driver had been drinking at an apartment rented by a 22 year old friend.  And so the 22 year old was also charged with a variety of crimes including endangering the welfare of a child.  I found it interesting to learn that the law considers a 19 year old man to be a child.  Several years ago a couple of 17 year olds that I know were busted for purchasing a case of beer with phony ID.  When they appeared in juvenile court, and among other things, the judged warned them that they had better be careful because next year they would be 18 and therefore treated in court as adults.  When I heard this I really wanted to write or call someone but I didn't know who to contact.  How can it be that an 18 year old can be treated as an adult for doing something they are not supposed to do because they are considered a minor?

    So let's put the first story together with the second.  Apparently we have some weird sort of Darwinism going on in our legal system.  At 17 you are considered to be a child.  Then at 18 you become an adult but at 19 you revert back to being a child.  Huh?  It's kind of like a butterfly crawling back into its cocoon and having to wait there awhile before it can get to be a butterfly again.  Does any of this make any sense?

    A couple of years ago there was a soldier in a nearby town who tragically was killed in Iraq.  He was 20 years old and left behind a wife and a young daughter.  I really don't want to make light of this but how is it that a 20 year old can die in a war, leave behind a wife and child, and never have lived long enough to legally drink a Budweiser?  Are we stupid or what?  I have been told, and I'm not going to bother verifying this, that soldiers under the age of 21 can drink a beer or two on their military base.  Great.  If you have a wife and child or two and you're 20 years old you can't have a drink.  But if you've been trained to kill and carry a rifle you can.

    I'd like some help with my readers on this.  How can we ever hope to solve our national debt, win the war in Afghanistan, solve global warming (if there is such a thing), etc. when we can't even figure out what a 19 or 20 year old is.  Come on folks.  You've all been there.  Who should I call?

America the Melting Pot?

    Those in my age group were always taught that America is a melting pot.  While I think that might have been true years ago, I'm not so sure that it is true today.  Here's an example of a melting pot...coffee.  A group of us might go out for a cup of coffee and one of us might have it with milk and sugar.  Someone else might have it black.  Still others might have it with saccharin, aspartame, splenda, and maybe someone will even have an expresso con panna.  In the end we will all be sitting down enjoying a cup of coffee together and that's all anyone will think about.  Once the coffee is made, you can't seperate out the sugar or the milk or the splenda.  It's just plain coffee.

    In contrast, we could all be enjoying a tossed salad.  Now a tossed salad might include lettuce, spinach,
tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, red onions, and any number of other fruits and/or vegetables.  The difference between coffee and a tossed salad however is that while each ingedient enjoys the same bowl, each ingredient also maintains its own identity.  As a result, some may choose to pick out the tomatoes and toss them aside.  Others might not like the cucumbers.  And to make it more complicated, tomato organizers might even get all the tomatoes together and have them form their own group called a tomato salad.  Likewise, the cucumber organizers might organize all the cucumbers into a cucumber salad.  Get the point?  It would be like having a bunch of (and where have I heard this before?) community organizers.

    So where does this end?  Instead of enjoying a nice tossed salad whereby all of the components reside in the same bowl, each ingredient would insist on still being on the same dinner table but residing in a seperate bowl so it could maintain its own identitiy.  Instead of a tossed salad we would then have a bowl of lettuce, a bowl of tomatoes, a bowl of cucumbers, a bowl of olives, etc., and there would be no such thing as a tossed salad as we know it.  I suspect that even environmentalists would object to that.  It would just create more bowls to wash which would mean using more fresh water, flushing more detergents down the drain, bigger sewage treatment plants, and more water pollution.  It would be like having a bunch of people of different nationalities who all want to live in America but wanting to continue to speak their own foreign languages and fly their own foreign flags.  How stupid would that be?

    Personally I think that there is nothing better than a nice chilled tossed salad especially on a warm summer day.  I enjoy every bit of it and I think that's how a salad should be.  The only thing is that I think we can all agree to keep out those anchovies.  I hate those anchovies.  You know what I mean, wink, wink.

The Poll Results Are In!!!

    This is pretty exciting stuff since I can now publish the results of how all you readers responded to the various polls I have put up there (so to speak).  In the first I asked "At what age should young adults be able to get a drivers license".  The results were:

16  -  55%
18  -  20%
42  -  20%
Never-5%

    From these results I would conclude that at least the majority of people would prefer to see their teenagers working as opposed to sitting around eating Doritoes and playing Nintendo.  Hooray that at least most of us have some common sense!!  But it's interesting to note that fully 5% think that no one should ever be able to get a license.  I suspect that these are the Al Gore worshippers who think we should all move around in helicopter vehicles and who fail to understand that it takes fossil fuel to power the propellers.  So let me educate them.  The propellers don't move for take off or flying because they are powered by the wind.  They create wind as a result of burning fuel.

    In my second poll concerning people of color the results were:

Pink  -  0%
Purple - 36%
Orange - 36%
Blue - 28%

    The most interesting thing to me about these results is that there are millions of women who walk around the country wearing shorts, spandex pants, and other attire that have the word pink displayed across their asses yet apparently no one actually wants to be pink.  Go figure.

    Lastly I asked, "What State Aid Should the Government Provide".  The answers were:

Gatoraid  -  25%
Coolaid  -  0%
Lemonaid - 0%
Let me keep my own money - 75%

    The results of this poll are obvious.  The overwhelming majority of you are more interested in maintaining your finances then you are in maintaining your level of some government agency recommendation about your level of hydration or electrolytes.  That's a good thing.  Another good thing is that no one seems to be interested in government provided sugar.  I guess that's a start.

   
   

   

 

The Poles Have Reversed!!

    The other night I watched the CMT country music awards hosted by Kid Rock.  While I'm not necessarily a fan of Kid Rock I was struck by the fact that when he came out on stage smoking a cigar and then was chastised by a fan in the audience for smoking in a non smoking arena he acknowledged the admonition but continued smoking his cigar.  Later in the show, the camera brought us back stage where a shot bar had been set up for performers who had left the stage.  I loved the political incorrectness.

    You know two score and plus or minus five or so years ago, our nation was preoccupied with millions of long haired, left wing, pot smoking liberal hippies who lived by the mantra "do your own thing" and who were inspired by Richie Havens singing Freedom, Freedom.  At the other end of the spectrum were the right wing, conservative, clean cut, country music, and mostly southern rednecks who considered the long haired, liberal freedom fighters to be unAmerican.

    So here is what has happened.  The liberal anti-establishment people who have now become the establishment and who once advocated legalized pot and free love want now to dictate how much salt we can put on a cheeseburger.  And on the other hand, the conservative red necks want us to be able to smoke in public places.  How did this happen?  When did the poles become reversed?

    I've long said that I would have loved to live in America when it was a free country.  As one small example why can't I open up a bar called let's say Mark's bar and allow smoking?  And then down the street someone might choose to open up another bar that did not allow smoking and call it Roy's bar.  That way if I chose to go have a drink and have a cigarette I could go to Mark's and if I didn't want smoking I could go to Roy's.  At least I would be free to choose.  Who says that in America some asshole politicians get to make that choice for me instead?  How did we let that happen?

    In my younger days I would have considered myself to be a liberal.  However, as I have become older I have learned that there really is a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives.  Here it is.  If a conservative decides that he or she should eat less meat, he or she will eat less meat.  If a liberal decides that he or she should eat less meat, they want to pass laws to make sure that everyone eats less meat.  If a conservative thinks that it's a good idea to wear a seat belt he will.  But liberals aren't satisfied until there's a law to make sure everyone conforms to the same behavior.

    So here's my suggestion.  Get off my case!!  The only way we are ever going to regain our freedoms is if politicians come to recognize that while they might like to mull over future legislation while sipping Scotch, others might like to do the same while smoking a bone.  And you know what, if you want to maintain your freedom to own and carry a gun just maybe you will have to give rights to two men or two women who want to marry each other.  I know that's a stretch and maybe we just can't get away from people trying to cram their personal ideologies down other peoples' throats but if we want to maintain our freedom I'd like to quote J.P. in the movie Angels in the Outfield when he says "it could happen".

What is "State Aid" - Part 1 (I Think)

    States all around the country find themselves in financial chaos.  This is primarily because they have been over spending for years and now find themselves at the brink of insolvency.  Responsible Governors have been leading the way in reducing spending but much to the chagrin of local politicians and officials who are faced with shortfalls in supporting school districts, police forces, and other local services.  They frequently blame the problems on the loss of "State Aid" and explain to their constituents all of the measures they are taking to push for more.

    To understand the problem I think it would be helpful to define exactly what "State Aid" is so let me give it a shot.  State aid is the percentage of money previously confiscated from the taxpayers that is used to support programs and services as determined worthy by the politicians currently in control and doled out to geographical areas that are again determined worthy by the politicians currently in control.

    Let's dissect this a little.  Why would I say "the percentage of money previously confiscated"?  That's because in order to collect our money and redistribute it, we need commissioners, department heads, clerical support, office space, office furniture, and cleaning services for the occupied spaces.   In addition, we need duplicate staffs called auditors since auditors are inherently more trustworthy and honest than are the first people to touch our money.  We need to pay for all of this so in essence, we pay a handling fee just like when we buy tickets through Ticketmaster.

    Imagine if we did our grocery shopping like this.  We would all go to our favorite grocery store and we would each give the manager let's say $100 to provide us with a week's worth of groceries.  Now immediately the store manager would take 30% off the top for the handling fee meaning that we would theoretically get back $70 worth of groceries for every $100 we gave him or her to begin with.  Next the manager would get to decide who gets back $90 worth of groceries, who gets $50 worth, etc. but let's save the unequal redistribution for another day and assume that we would each get our $70 worth.

    So we would all hang out in the parking lot waiting to see what we received.  You would here comments like "oooh, I hope I get some ice cream this week", and, "I really need a piece of chicken for Tuesday night", or, "I hope I get sweet pickles this week.  I really didn't like those dill spears".  It would be like spending the afternoon with a bunch of nitwits.  Yet, that is exactly what our local "leaders" do when it comes to state aid.  Just substitute school budget for ice cream, a town park for chicken, and maybe a sidewalk someplace for the sweet pickles.

    So here's an idea.  Let's just stop sending our money to Sacramento, or Albany, Trenton, or Lansing.  Instead, let us keep our money in our own communities.  That way we can just give it directly to the school district.  If we want a park, we can build it.  And if we need a sidewalk someplace, we get to decide.  After all, we're adults.  We can make those decisions.  Heck if nothing else at least we'll save the handling fee!!

    Please take a moment to respond to the poll regarding this subject on upper right.  This is valuable information.  Also, let me know what your thoughts are so I can use them in Part 2 of this topic.  You can either post a comment or email me at tzdk8@aol. com.  Thank you.