Tea Party Conversations: Health Care

Generic Republican: The government wants to give you health care.
Prospective Tea Person: That's awesome, I need some health care. Thanks for the good news, mysterious stranger.
Generic Republican: No, this is a bad thing, you should be angry about this.
Prospective Tea Person: What? Why?
Generic Republican: The government wants to give you health care.
Prospective Tea Person: Ohhhhhh...wait, I'm still not following you.
Generic Republican: The government wants to force you to buy health insurance.
Prospective Tea Person: But they don't have to force me, I want health insurance.
Generic Republican: But what if you didn't.
Prospective Tea Person: But I do.
Generic Republican: Yeah, but what if you didn't.
Prospective Tea Person: I'm still not following you.
Generic Republican: Right now, you have the freedom to choose health insurance coverage...
Prospective Tea Person: Right...
Generic Republican: ...but the government is going to start providing health insurance to people, and then private providers won't be able to compete with the government's low premiums, so they'll go out of business, and then you won't have a choice.
Prospective Tea Person: ...Oh...
Generic Republican: They're taking away your freedom to choose.
Prospective Tea Person: ...but I like freedom.
Generic Republican: Of course you do.
Prospective Tea Person: But it still sounds like I'll end up with health insurance that's cheaper than what I have now.
Generic Republican: No, what you'll end up with is socialized medicine.
Prospective Tea Person: What does that mean?
Generic Republican: It means the government will come between you and your doctor, ration care and decide who gets life saving procedures and who doesn't.
Prospective Tea Person: Don't insurance companies do that now anyway?
Generic Republican: What you're talking about is just the free market at work, I'm talking about socialism.
Generic Republican: I'm also talking about government funded abortions.
Prospective Tea Person: Wait..what? 
Generic Republican: When the government takes over health care, they'll use your tax dollars to fund abortions.
Prospective Tea Person: But I'm against abortion.
Generic Republican: Sure you are, all good Americans are.
Prospective Tea Person: It's not OK to use my tax dollars for something I don't like, that makes me angry.
Generic Republican: And you know what else? Socialized medicine will make us just like Europe and Canada.
Prospective Tea Person: Well I don't like Europe, but my friends from Canada say they get great health care.
Generic Republican: No, that's just a liberal myth.  Canadians have to wait months to see doctors, and their doctors aren't as good as ours. 
Prospective Tea Person: But what if I'm sick right now?  I can't wait months to see a doctor.
Generic Republican: No you can't. 
Prospective Tea Person: But what about the tens of millions of people in America that don't have health insurance?  Won't the government's plan get them covered?
Generic Republican: First of all, liberals have been exaggerating the number of people without health coverage for years so they can build support for their government take over...
Prospective Tea Person: Oh...
Generic Republican: ...and besides that, people in America aren't really going without health care.  Anyone can just walk into an emergency room right now and get treatment when they need it.
Prospective Tea Person: But isn't health care expensive?  Isn't that why we need insurance in the first place?  How do people pay for their emergency room visits without insurance?
Generic Republican: Well, if the government would just get out of the way and let the free market work, the cost of health care would go down and then people could afford it.
Prospective Tea Person: But before you said the free market is already at work.
Generic Republican: But it could be more at work.  We need lower taxes, less bureaucracy and less regulation so we can grow the economy for people while simultaneously allowing insurance companies to lower prices.
Prospective Tea Person: What do lower taxes have to do with anything?
Generic Republican: Well, a government take over of health care would eventually result in a big tax hike to pay for it.
Prospective Tea Person: But I already pay so much in taxes.
Generic Republican: I know, and the government wants to make you pay even more for their unconstitutional take over of health care.
Prospective Tea Person: Unconstitutional?
Generic Republican: Yup, the government can't make you buy things.
Prospective Tea Person: They make me buy car insurance.
Generic Republican: That's different, you choose to have a car.
Prospective Tea Person: But they're still making me buy something.
Generic Republican: Trust me, it's very different.
Prospective Tea Person: I'm angry and confused.
Generic Republican: Welcome to the tea party, let's get you a George Washington wig!
Tea Person: Yeah!

Sticks and Stones

It seems like a weird time for our politics. Lots of anger and shouting and name calling. OK, that doesn't sound all that weird, but it seems to be turned up quite a bit lately. Some people are worried about all this rhetoric being a preamble to something. I don't blame people for worrying.

To be more specific, I don't blame genuinely worried people. On the other hand, people exploiting threats for political gain should find something more constructive to do with themselves. Maybe they should take up pot smoking. It'll totally mellow them out, and they'll most likely lose their jobs so we won't have to deal with them anymore.

Political assassination is a scary thing, because it only takes one lunatic to take a shot at someone. I think threats and violence against big important people like Presidents and Congressmen, or even just celebrities, anyone who has serious security, remind us how unsafe us regular folks are sometimes. So I don't blame people for being worried.

Me? I'm not that worried. I don't think something bad is about to happen. Or, more accurately, I don't think something bad is any more likely to happen now than it normally would be. This strikes me more as a Republican temper tantrum, mixed with the loud, obnoxious racism, homophobia and general intolerance of the tea idiots. Put them together and it looks kind of scary.

But really, the tea people aren't violent, they're just super angry and not terribly bright. And the Republicans aren't violent either. They're mad because they lost an election, and then another one. Then, they really thought they had this health care thing won, and they lost that too. I think this is just the political equivalent of Republicans kicking the wall and calling the Democrats big fat poopyheads. They'll get over it, we just need to get them some ice cream, or take them to McDonald's for dinner, that always did it for me.

Speaking of poopyheads, I have a question for Republicans. Every once in a while, I'll hear some TV bobblehead complain about President Obama's secret plan to redistribute the wealth. They paint him as some kind of evil, big government Robinhood, using taxes and health care to steal from the rich and give to the poor. This, of course, is what makes him a socialist who's destroying America.

Here's my question. Where were all the so-called conservatives when your hero Ronald Reagan was dismantling the middle class with his ridiculous economic theory and redistributing what little wealth they had to rich people? I don't like redistribution of wealth either way, because that's not what the government is supposed to be doing. But it seems to me that a lot of the people calling themselves "conservatives" today are OK with redistributing wealth as long as it's moving upward.

The interesting thing is how many regular, everyday people seem to be all for it. How do you get regular people so angry about making it harder for insurance companies to screw us? Or regulating banks? Or taxing the wealthy? Two theories. The first is the old myth of the American dream. Everyone's planning for the day they get rich. That's an old theory and still a perfectly plausible one. But I have a better idea.

Stockholm syndrome. The insurance companies and the banks and all the other big corporations are holding us hostage. They threaten to set the economy on fire if we don't bail them out. They threaten to raise premiums if health care reform passes. They threaten to lay people off and raise prices if taxes go up. If the government upsets the status quo, the corporations punish the people, that's the threat. And so many of the people buy right into it, but it's not because they're stupid. Being a hostage sucks, you can't blame people for begging the cops to give the hostage takers whatever they want, and you can't blame people for identifying with their captors, it happens all the time.

I guess this means I can't call the tea people stupid anymore (damn, I was really enjoying that). No more calling them tea idiots, or stupid ignorant racist homophobes. Wait, I can still call some of them racist homophobes, that part doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of this, some of those people just really don't like black people (and Arabs, and Muslims, and the gays, oh and Mexicans, we're about to start talking about immigration reform again, I'm pretty sure I can guess where the tea people will stand). But I can't call them stupid anymore, and I won't.

And, honestly, they aren't stupid. They're mostly regular, hard-working people who want what's best for the country. They look stupid sometimes because they're getting all riled up and mislead by the likes of Beck and Hannity and Palin and Bachmann. Ah...I feel so much better, that last sentence just reminded me that I still have plenty of people to call stupid.

Socialism: Day One

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is the best weekend of the year, and I'm not even a huge college basketball fan. Under the circumstances, I think it was perfect timing. It was like one last great American party before everything changed. Late last night, the House of Representatives passed the health care bill, which means we're now a socialist country, and we don't get to enjoy cool American stuff like the NCAA tournament anymore. It makes perfect sense, because, when I think of socialist/marxist/communists, like say, Hitler and Stalin, I immediately think "health care".

I have to say though, my first day in the United Socialist States of America has been a little disappointing. I mean, look, I'm not happy about being a socialist now, I really liked the old America. But, I've decided to adopt a positive attitude and make the best of our new system of government. I know it's only been one day, but so far, I feel like I'm not getting what I was promised.

I still had to get up and go to work today. I didn't think I'd have to do that anymore. I was expecting the government to just send me some free money that I didn't have to work for. It's a good thing I took a day off on Friday. If I had been at work Friday, knowing socialism was coming on Sunday, I might have quit my job. Without a job or my free government money, I'd be totally screwed right now. Maybe my free money will come at the end of the week, like pay checks do. I'll be waiting.

What about President Obama's death panels? I was sure the government was going to start killing everyone's grandparents as soon as this bill was passed. So far, I don't know of anybody in my family being put to death by the government. It could be that I just don't know about it yet, but I feel like my mother would have called.

"Gee, Sean, lack of death panels doesn't seem like a reason to be disappointed". True, but we all know the death panels are coming, they were a key component of the bill. It's sort of like when you were a kid and you did something really bad. You knew your parents were going to punish you, but then they didn't right away. You spent the rest of the day terrified, just waiting for them to do something. I feel the same way now. I know the death panels are coming, I wish the President would just get it over with. Right now, we don't know who's going to die, or when, or how. This waiting seems cruel and unusual.

Speaking of death, I know for a fact that freedom died yesterday. Republicans in Congress were very clear about this. It's bad enough that I was apparently not invited to the funeral, freedom and I were pretty close, but I haven't even seen a lot of TV coverage. Fox is the only channel really talking about it, and they seem more in denial than anything else. TV covered Michael Jackson's death for like two weeks. Hell, the death of Corey Haim got a few days. Nothing for the death of freedom? I'm disappointed.

Also, since Republicans on TV have been telling me that we're heading toward European-style socialism, I was expecting something with soccer. Europeans love soccer, and I assume it's a key part of their particular brand of socialism. I was expecting something like a $1,000 check in the mail, in exchange for which I would be required to attend and enjoy soccer games. There's soccer happening outside my window right now and, well, I still hate it. Now, I haven't received my soccer subsidy yet, so maybe my feelings will change when it arrives.

What about all the slavery reparations? Glenn Beck was adamant about this bill being part of a secret plan to redistribute wealth in an effort to make reparations for slavery. Shouldn't there be a guy at my door collecting money? Maybe because my family wasn't here until the 1900's I get out of this one. That kind of makes sense, but I don't know, Glenn didn't say anything like that, and he said he was telling me the whole truth. I'll have to check the text of the bill. (Glenn, by the way, is in full tantrum mode right now, it's hilarious)

As a matter of fact, I haven't even noticed a drastic change to my health insurance yet. I think I'm still on the same plan I had last week. I thought they were sending a government bureaucrat to come stand between me and my doctor (in my case, it's an imaginary doctor, because I don't go to doctors and you can't make me). Maybe I'll try to make a doctor's appointment later this week, just to see how crazy and different it is.

I don't know. Maybe socialism is like quitting smoking. When people quit smoking, they don't just magically become 100% healthy right away, it takes a little time. Maybe I should just be patient and wait a few weeks. Or maybe this bill's full socialist effect won't happen until the Senate is done passing the reconciliation fixes. That's certainly possible.

The only other possibility is that Republicans and TV conservatives were lying to me about what was going to happen when this bill passed. No, no that's ridiculous. What kind of person would make up lies to try and defeat a bill that aims to insure over 30 million people? What kind of monster would go on TV, day after day, and hammer a health care bill just to further their own career? No, I don't think any of my TV friends would do that...

OK, OK, I've had my fun. Do I have any serious thoughts about the bill?

1) I don't love this bill, but I'll buy it as a step in the right direction. The pre-existing condition thing is solid policy. So is the part about not kicking people off their plans when they get sick. Allowing kids to stay on parents' policies longer in this economy is a nice touch too. I'm not sure why most of the other good stuff doesn't kick in until 2014, but it probably has something to do with our government being barely functional.

2) I really don't like the individual mandate. I know it's hard to affordably insure sick people without making healthy people be part of the pool. That doesn't mean I have to like it. There isn't a little fine print section at the end of the Constitution that reads "*feel free to violate this document if it makes doing what you want to do too hard". I wonder about Constitutional challenges here. I'm sure I could find something in article one, section eight to uphold this, but, as you may have noticed, I'm not actually on the Supreme Court, so what I can find doesn't matter all that much.

The only thing that blunts my problem with this is the fact that I don't feel like I've ever had a choice. I've had three jobs that provided benefits. All of them just signed me up for a plan, they didn't ask me if I wanted one. Maybe I had to ask about it, like the secret menu at in-n-out burger. Oh well.

3) I especially don't like the individual mandate without a public option. We're basically just forcing everyone to buy insurance from the companies that are already screwing us. Only now we're making it slightly harder to screw us and we're providing subsidies (for the buying, not the screwing, I think).

4) This whole abortion thing is stupid. First of all, it's apparently a nonsense debate because, for reasons I obviously don't fully understand, federal funding of abortion is already illegal. Undeterred by reality, yesterday, Congressman Mike Pence (R-Imagination Land) said it is "morally wrong" to use the tax dollars of pro-life Americans to fund abortion. Really, moron? Quoting one of my all-time favorite TV characters, "I don't know where you get the idea that taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for anything of which they disapprove. Lots of them don't like tanks, even more don't like Congress." Is it morally wrong to use the tax dollars of anti-war Americans to fund the military? Of course it isn't.

Someone should have the authority to immediately throw people like Pence out of Congress for stupidity (put that on my list of dream jobs, right near the top too). Either that, or we should send Pence, Michelle Bachmann and Steve King (not the crazy novelist, the crazy Congressman from Iowa) down to the basement of the Capitol to guard the bee whenever Congress is trying to do something serious.

Bachmann: "Duh, Mike, why are we down here?"
Pence: "Aw geez, I told you Michelle, to guard the bee."
King: "But whyyyy?"
Pence: "You guys are pathetic. No wonder Pelosi made me head bee guy."

5) Speaking of abortion, I don't understand how these Republicans can all be against giving more people health insurance. Aren't these the "right to life" people? I'm positive I've seen that on a Republican sign somewhere. Won't it be easier for people to exercise their right to life if they can, you know, stay alive?

6) My favorite part of Health Care Day (that's what I'm calling yesterday, I think it'll catch on) was MSNBC's brief coverage of tea party idiots trying, and apparently failing, to spell out the word "no" on a lawn near the Capitol building. I'm sure they got it right eventually, and MSNBC was probably just mocking them a little to gloat. It was still funny though.

On a more serious note, these tea morons have me seriously considering changing my party affiliation from Republican to Independent. I'm still up in the air about it. Congratulations tea people, you are so ridiculous, so blatantly racist and ignorant, you've got me considering leaving a party that I was willing to share with fundamentalist christians.

7) How many times in the next seven or eight months do you think a Republican somewhere will say the bill was passed in the middle of the night or under the cover of darkness (spooooky!)?

8) Finally, is it possible that the Democrats did something (gulp) politically smart? Follow me on this. Sometime early last week, the Democrats started talking about using this deem and pass procedure, which would have allowed them to deem the Senate bill passed through the House without actually having a direct vote on the Senate bill. Republicans freaked out, and rightfully so. We spent the rest of the week listening to Republicans complain about the process.

Then, Saturday, the Democrats announced they'd just pass the Senate bill with a regular vote. It almost seems like they intentionally tricked the Republicans into spending the last week of debate arguing about a process issue that never actually came up instead of making points about the weaknesses of the actual bill. This left the Republican message a little jumbled going into the vote. I think the Democrats just won a political chess match. Politically competent Democrats? Hold me, I'm afraid.

Corpocracy

Did I watch Conan O'Brien's last Tonight Show? Hell yeah I did! It was fantastic. Neil Young was awesome (Neil was awesome on the Haiti concert too. Is that the first time him and Dave Matthews played together? Did Neil travel back in time at some point so he could have a second career as Dave Matthews?). Plus, and I swear this is true, I had never heard Free Bird before, at least not that I can remember. I'd heard of it, but I'd never actually heard the song. Will Ferrell, by the way, has gotten to the point where I can't tell if he's kidding anymore, but he gets an A+ for breaking out the cowbell (I feel like we needed a little more of it). If I was Fox, I'd give Conan a blank check to go on my network at 11:30 starting in September and do whatever the hell he wants. If they do it right, he'll crush Leno and Letterman. I almost wrote a whole thing about it, but then I thought, who would I be convincing? Is there anyone who would say "no Sean, I don't think Conan has a big future in TV, Fox should just stick with Seinfeld reruns at night"? Of course not, that would be ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, Glenn Beck, my favorite TV crazy person, is at it again. Last week Glenn did a whole special about how communism is bad. Thanks Glenn, that's super helpful. I hadn't noticed all the communist countries failing miserably and disappearing, except Cuba and North Korea, who can't feed themselves. At one point, Glenn teased the next segment as the story of the holocaust that history forgot. That sounded unlikely right off the bat, but I stuck around to find out. Turned out he was talking about Stalin. Ummm, what? Can I get a show of hands from anyone who didn't know Stalin killed millions of people? Seriously, wow, kudos to Glenn for pointing out that Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Che Guevara were all bad guys (I know, people wear Che t-shirts, it's not because they support all the things he did, it's because they're stupid. Glenn, of all people, should understand what that's like).

With whom did Glenn think he was arguing? Does he think people were watching and thinking "sorry dude, I totally disagree with you about that Stalin guy, he seems super cool"? I know we have some communists in America (and that's the good part about America, you get to believe whatever you want, and tell people about it too, and I'm not allowed to send you to jail, or even punch you), but they're not the crazy killing people communists, they're more the sharing the wealth types. I have yet to meet anyone who thinks all America needs is Stalin. And I know Glenn would say that the wealth sharing communists always eventually turn into the killing communists. And if there was a huge wealth sharing communist movement in America and Glenn was talking about them and warning them that it's easy to get carried away, I wouldn't make fun of him.

Unfortunately, Glenn was talking about this because he continues to insist that President Obama and the majority of Congress are, in reality, communists/marxists/socialists/facists; maybe polygamists. OK, I made up that last one. But Goldmember Beck isn't the only one saying this, lots of "conservatives" are. I'm not sure why.

The bank bailout? As far as I can tell, here are the terms we gave the banks in return for giving them an oil tanker full of unmarked bills:
1) You have to pay us back, well most of it, or some, unless you really don't want to. We might suggest a new tax/fee to get the money back, but it'll never pass Congress because, um, you own Congress.
2) You have to come to Washington every once in a while and re-apologize for lighting the economy on fire and using the flames to light your cigars. You have to try and sound really sorry.
3) We're going to use you as a political pinata for a while.
4) There are some things we're requiring you to do with the money to help re-build the economy you broke, and no more huge bonuses (or, if you prefer, boni)...just kidding. Do whatever the hell you want.

Now, you could argue, since we don't produce actual things in this country anymore, that the banks are as much a means of production as anything. I'll buy that, especially because, the way our economy is set up, it's basically impossible to start any kind of business without a loan. But if you'd say that the government controls the banks now, you have a very odd definition of control. It reminds me of that joke about who aliens would think was in charge if they came down and saw us following dogs around and picking up their poop. The banks destroy the economy, the government gives them billions of dollars and they get super rich again while the rest of our economy still sucks. It's hard to argue a lot of government control in that equation.

Health Care?
I don't know what a final health care bill is going to look like, or if we'll get one at all. I do know that Republicans have been crying about a "government take over of health care". What? What part of forcing citizens to by insurance from private insurance companies at basically the same rates we're paying now constitutes a takeover? Believe me, I've argued that a government takeover of health care might be necessary, the way the government controls the military or police, because the private sector isn't doing the job on health care. If the government was taking over health care, I'd be among the first people to say so.

What about the auto industry bailouts?
Well, we're getting warmer at least. I'm not wild about taxpayers owning the majority of GM, especially since by taxpayers I mean the federal government. Because if I owned any piece of GM, we wouldn't be getting rid of the Saturn brand. Soon I'll have to find somewhere else to take my car for service, I don't like change. On the other hand, there are a couple of realities here worth noting. First, if we're going to bailout huge banks, why not also save some jobs for blue collar auto workers. If you'd rather have done neither, that's an excellent point and I couldn't agree more, but that ship had already sailed on the President when he took office. Second, if it takes a little government input to get GM to stop making cars that get 3 miles per gallon and explode whenever they turn left, then so be it.

On a somewhat related topic, last week, the Supreme Court ruled that any limit on corporate contributions for buying campaign ads in unconstitutional. They can't just give a candidate a sack of money, but they can buy all the ads they want (which is what campaigns use money for anyway). Great job Supreme Court, well done. For years, Congress has tried to find sneaky little ways to be corporate whores, now they can do it right out in the open, I'm so thrilled (by the way, Republicans seem to be supporting this decision, I'm not sure why they think it'll be better for them, Democrats can be whores too).

This doesn't really look like socialism or communism to me. It's actually sort of the opposite of socialism, the corporations are running the government. What do you call that? Congressman Clyburn, specifically in reference to the Supreme Court ruling, called it a corpocracy. I knew there was a reason I always liked him. I especially like corpocracy because, if you look at it really quickly, it kind of looks like crapocracy. Is this better than communism or socialism? Probably not. But it isn't socialism.