There were kids out playing in the snow.  They were strapped into some contraption and getting towed around the snowy streets.  (It was kind of like a ski lift on wheels.)

I was walking down the street as they were coming towards me, and I couldn’t resist picking up a snowball.  I aimed at the side of the contraption so my snowball would make a loud ‘bang’, but I underthrew.  The snowball hit the foot of a little girl, all bundled up in her pink snowsuit with a little pink hat with a white poof on the tip.  When she was hit, she looked down at her feet and then looked up at the sky and yelled, “OW,  JESUS!  Why are you so mean, old Jesus?!”

I literally woke myself up laughing.

The source is

I would have preferred to use a federal government site, but the only one I could find (www.cbo.gov) only had data back to 1968.  The data from this website matches the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) data for the overlap, so I went ahead and used it without further verification.  I added in the column for President and Party.  The ‘President’ column is the president in office when the budget was signed.  (E.G. Because Reagan was in office in Oct/Nov 1988 when the budget was signed for FY 1989 … even though Bush was in office for all but 20 or so days of FY1989, Reagan gets credit for FY 1989.)

Here are a couple of interesting things to note.  The last Republican president to sign a balanced budget was Eisenhower (1960).  Clinton and Johnson both signed balanced budgets.  The average of ‘deficit as a % of GDP’ (average of % is not exactly a valid measure, but work with me here) for Democratic presidents is 1.0%.  For Republican presidents, it’s 2.6%.   If you prefer the average size of the deficit then Democratic presidents (only counting years that were ACTUALLY deficit years so it doesn’t advantage Democratic presidents for budget surpluses) is $82.4 billion.  For Republican Presidents, the average size of the deficit is $173.9 billion.

Here’s another interesting fact.   Here is the size of the deficit reduction over the President’s term.  (Taking the size of the deficit inherited from the previous president to the last budget signed.  E.G. Bush Jr inherited a $128 billion surplus from Clinton and left office with a $1.4 TRILLION deficit – totalling $1.5 trillion deficit increase.)

Again.  The last Republican president to reduce the DEFICIT (not the debt … rather, the SIZE of the deficit) was Eisenhower.  In the past 50 years, ALL Republican presidents have ACCELERATED deficit spending.   On the other hand, the ONLY Democratic president to increase the size of the deficit (counting Kennedy/Johnson as one administration for obvious reasons) was Carter … who increased the deficit by less than 1/2 the increase of his predecessor and by 1/4 of the increase of following president.

There are holes in what I’m presenting here, obviously.   I may bring this up again when I can nail down a couple more things (like party control of Congress.)  But as of now, it’s pretty clear that Democratic presidents have a MUCH better track record of fiscal responsibility than Republican presidents.  It’s not even close.  I certainly won’t trust another Republican presidential candidate that talks about ‘fiscal responsibility’.

So three times a week, I wake up at 5:45, set the cruise control and drive to Pierre South Dakota.  (Seriously, I think Pierre is probably the smallest of all state capitals.)  We get to the hospital, go up to the 4th floor, and my dad gets wired up so he can be monitored while he walks on a treadmill (and a couple other machines) for 30 minutes.  I sit down, open a book, and try to not get caught checking out this adorably cute girl that works on the other side of the rehab center.  She’s about 5’5″, wears her blond hair pulled back in a french braid, and smiles a lot at the people she works with.

Yesterday, the cute girl walked into the hospital carrying a grocery bag filled with 2 liter bottles of soda at the same time my dad and I walked in.  I don’t usually go out of my way to meet people, but when a gift-wrapped opportunity comes along, I’m not terribly shy about siezing it. So I offered to carry the bag upstairs for her. 

Now, if anyone STILL wonders why I’m single after all this time, here’s the reason why.  My best opening line of the year is “Can I carry your books?”  Yeah.  I’m still flirting on a 6th grade level.

The conversation started when he asked, “Do you think that birds have enough memory in their heads to remember where to go every spring?”

At least I’m here before mosquito season this time.  The BIG suckers here scare me.

I thought that the constitution provided for national elections for President and state elections for Congress to pass laws for the country as a whole.  Huh?  Guess I was wrong.

Ok.  First off.  The current (semi) private health insurance system works ok … for one group of people.  It works for HEALTHY (read no ‘pre-existing conditions’) corporate and government employees.  That’s it.  It fails miserably for the unemployed, the self-employed, the freelancers, the victims of unfortunate accidents or genetics, the elderly and pretty much anyone who would possibly USE health insurance.  If you lose your job (happened to anyone you know recently?), if you have an accident, if you have a child with an unfortunate genetic condition, or if you get old, you’re basically out in the cold.  You’re not covered (except maybe by the government’s ‘socialized’ medicare plan if you’re old).  And you can’t GET covered.  As a matter of fact, if you are one of the accident or genetic victims, you can’t get a JOB because of your pre-existing condition, let alone get covered.  Nice system huh?  That’s what the uproar is trying to protect.  Weird.

Ok, second point.  There’s a reluctance to trust health care coverage decisions to the same people who run the IRS.  While that’s understandable, let’s look at the alternatives and make a comparison.  If you ARE covered by private insurance, your health care coverage decisions are made by people who are trying to make money.  They’re made by corporate VPs … either in the insurance company or your employer.  The incentive in both cases is to NOT cover you.  For insurance companies, they don’t want to spend money.  Every dollar they spend on your health care is taken directly from their profit line.  So yes.  They are going to fight you on everything.  For the corporate VPs making the coverage decisions for their employees?  Their incentive is to boost company profits to raise stock prices so they can cash in their stock options.  The talk about health care being so expensive is … mostly talk.  Coverage has been cut at every company I’m aware of, premiums have been raised, and guess what … CEOs and VPs get rich because of it.  They make long term decisions to take company revenues away from covering their employees in order to get short term increases in stock prices.  They create ‘revenue growth’ by screwing their employees so they can cash in stock options.  So.  Looking at the choice of who you want making decisions about health care, do you want disinterested government employees (who admittedly are going to screw it up half the time, but they don’t get anything in return for denying you coverage) or self-serving corporate types who will make money if you get less coverage?  I’m going to vote for the government employees … BECAUSE they don’t care.

Now, if I haven’t convinced you on that last point, let’s do one thing.  Talk to people.  Talk to government employees … the kind who have government officials making the decisions … and talk to corporate types.  See who is actually more satisfied with their health care plans.  Do you really believe it will be the corporate types?  Really?  My money is definitely on the government plans.  Yeah.  The ‘socialized’ ones.

Ok, next point.  (Are you tired of this yet?)  ’Socialism’ is bad.  Government taking over health care is just one step on the slippery slope of communism.  Ok Glen Beck, settle down.  Here’s my point on this one.  Where exactly do doctors come from?  Are they born in little white gowns with latex gloves covering their tiny little fingers?  Not exactly.  Just about every doctor I would trust came from a US medical school.  After an undergraduate degree at a US university.  Which they needed a US high school diploma to get.  Do you see where I’m going?  Our doctors are the product of the public education system.  Sure, a VERY small percentage come from private prep schools or home schooling.  Does your doctor?  Probably not.  So, why, oh why is there a massive upcry about ‘socialized medicine’ when ‘socialized education’ produced nearly every doctor you know?  I’m especially amused by teachers who oppose the health care initiatives.  (Sorry mom.)  Teachers LOVE public education and oppose private education at every turn.  (They’re socialists… at least when it comes to schools.)  They have government-run health care already.  There’s not a good logical base for opposition here.  So I think it’s amusing.

Ok.  My last point.  How horrible health care will be if the government takes it over.  Let’s completely set aside how awful it is now.  Let’s go ahead and grant the assumption (again, if you’re a teacher and you want to make this assumption, then FUNNY!) that the quality of doctors will deteriorate under ‘socialized medicine’.  So, we’re imagining the world of government-run health care with underpaid doctors and a major ‘brain drain’ in the medical field.  How is that bad?  How many people in their lifetimes will NEED the very best doctor they can find?  How many of us are with mediocre doctors right now, and have no clue because mediocre is all we really need?  I posit that the group of people who need and ever will need the cream of the crop is very small.  And you know what?  They aren’t covered for that anyway.  The people who do and will need the BEST doctors are the people that are denied coverage based on pre-existing conditions.  For the rest of us?  Bring on the mediocre.  It’s all we need.  It’s fine.   Exactly the way that public school is satisfactory for nearly everyone.  So, you can’t see the doctor without waiting for a couple weeks?  Have you TRIED to get a same day appointment with your current doctor?  Waiting a couple of weeks isn’t a big change.  So you don’t get coverage for the most current prescription drugs?  Is that bad?  Only if you’re a hypochondriac.  We’re an entirely overly medicated nation anyway.

So to sum up my opinion.  Will government health care suck?  Probably.  But it will suck a lot less than what we have right now.  And more people will be covered by a less sucky system.  That’s a good thing.  That’s my opinion.  Go ahead and share yours.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=10028787

Looks like a life lesson on how government REALLY works.