Today has started out like every other day over the last week.  I turned the radio on then the television to take a quick look at the morning news and everyone who can hold a pencil or type with the one finger method was writing or pounding out numbers trying to determine who has the most delegates to have a chance to compete against John McCain for president.  I am not sure if this is a tragedy in the making or just entertaining.  The experts are looking at every possible outcome that can result from this exercise.

The conflict in the Democratic Party has been good for television and radio but what about our country and our people.  There is no doubt in my mind that some individuals and groups would like this trouble to become a racial issue or at least an issue about gender.  The problem started when the leaders of the Democratic Party decided that the Florida and Michigan delegates would not participate in choosing their parties nominee at the convention.  No one will ever have all the details and information that went into the decision that led to the people of Michigan and Florida having their votes cancelled.  The people have to wonder how a decision of this magnitude would be determined.

I could be wrong but it appears that several dozen Democratic leaders from Michigan and Florida made the decision to move their state primaries ahead on the calendar.  The states changed their primary dates in order to become more relevant in the total process for choosing a presidential Nominee for the Democratic Party.  Who really made this decision?  It appears the wrong people are paying for these mistakes unless the actual voters of Michigan and Florida communicated their support to the leaders of the Democratic Party that they wanted the primary dates changed. Were the people of these two states aware they would lose their rights to choose the presidential nominee?  One has to consider why the National Committee failed to punish those leaders that actually made the mistake for changing the primary dates.  It would have been reasonable for the National Committee to penalize the State Committees by holding back funding, suspending the state leaders without pay or at least take back their keys to the executive washroom?  I have a hard time understanding why the National Committee could not find other ways to penalize these two states. I doubt or at least I find it hard to believe that the people of Michigan or Florida understood that there would be a severe penalty for changing the primary dates. The real question we all should being asking is, does the crime fit the punishment?  The situation makes no sense. What harm does it do to change the primary dates? State leadership intended to do something positive for the people of Florida and Michigan. The Florida and Michigan leadership was trying to make the primary process meaningful for its people.  

I am not a conspiracy theorist with the exception of the John Kennedy assassination.  Why was it so important for these two major primaries to take place on a certain day of a certain month?  One has to consider why it was such an offense to change the primaries to some other time.  Important questions need to be discussed such as did changing these two primaries cause a conflict with the United Nation’s new cocktail party season.  One only has to think back to the Al Gore and George Bush fiasco where hand-to-hand combat and ultimately the Supreme Court decided the president of the United States.  I can clearly remember the mean spirited polarizing efforts of the democrats. They demanded the votes be counted until the candidate or let us say the right candidate won.  The democrats were not talking about the rightful winner but the right winner and that would have been Al Gore.  I certainly wanted a fair election.  Volunteers whose political affiliation was known by all became the focal point to maintain the appearance of a fair election. These volunteers stared for countless hours at chads. The subjective process of identifying a ‘‘hanging chad’’ had begun.  This process would repeat itself until the desired effect was found. This whole process was nothing short of crazy making.  The democrats were so obsessed with making sure every living person including my brother’s three dogs Rex, Ears and Barker had the privilege of voting in the 2000 election.  It was incredible given the amount of energy and political daring the Democrats invested in the FloridaState election.  When one examines the effort in 2000 to count every vote with the effort to eliminate every vote in 2008 one would have to think conspiracy.  Our country is now playing for much higher stakes.  We are at war. We are facing countries like North Korea and Iran who wants to harm us. We are facing an energy crisis as well as an economic crisis. Our national borders are almost nonexistent. We are unable to protect our ports of entry. I would think the Democrats and Republicans would want the inclusion of all of our people.  I have a very difficult time believing that the Democratic National Committee would disenfranchise millions of voters from having the opportunity to choose the next president of the United States but that is what is happing.  The country is broken up into blue and red states.  The Senate and Congress have split almost down the middle and look at all those two bodies of law makers have accomplished over the last year.  Yes, I am joking. When it comes to choosing a candidate, the Democrats are spilt down the center. We are divided as a people in more ways than we can count.  As mention earlier race is being interjected into the political process like never before.  The Obama people have called Geraldine Ferraro a racist because of statements she made about their popular presidential nominee.  This nominee collected 90 percent of the black vote from the state of Mississippi.  Yes, we are talking about Mondale's vice presidential running mate. Ferraro has always been a friend of minorities and the disabled community. Point is, we as a people are clearly divided.  We no longer seem divided by clubs, parties, teams, politics, gender, disability or culture. We seem divided by camps. The stakes are high. Are they so high that we cannot compete with each other in ways that are sensible, serious and honest? 

When I look at the Democratic leadership, I really have to wonder given the manner in which they have changed the rules.  I wonder about words like manipulation, conspiracy and control. The old book ‘‘Animal Farm’’ describes a group of farm animals who rebel against a cruel mean farmer and create a new life style or government.  The animals formed their own government giving all animals equality.  The animals wrote their laws on the barn wall.  The pigs began to pull away and take advantage of the other animals.  The pigs began living like the mean old farmer.  The pigs moved into the farmhouse breaking a key animal law.  When all the other animals ran to look at the laws on the barn wall they saw that the law-disallowing animals to live in the farmhouse was changed to read no animals can live in the farmhouse with the exception of pigs.  The words with the exception of pigs was dripping and still drying with red paint.  I hope there are no groups out there that are going to be upset with me because they think I am comparing pigs to some leaders.  I would never do that to those gentle creatures.

Health care has been at the forefront of the political conversation since the First Lady Hillary Clinton took it on and became an unsuccessful casualty in 1992.  I think it is now time that I contribute my two cents to the debate. Our presidential candidates are estimating that there are 40 million people in the United States that are uninsured.  During the presidential debates our Democratic candidates have shared personal stories that tear at the heart.  The health care issue has moved back and forth from an economic to a moral concern depending on the makeup of the audience.  If you are speaking to a house full of Democrats then words like compassion, caring, kindness, help, love and morality will be tossed about without taking a breath.  If one is speaking to a group of Republicans or conservatives then words like compassion, caring, kindness, help, love and morality may not be spoken out loud.  Though not spoken out loud these words will be a part of the thinking process that motivates the conservative’s ideas and planning for health care.  The real difference is the latter group will be motivated by feelings tempered by judgment that can create a process to make health care a reality.  In other words feelings and moral imperatives might get the fire started but someone will need to chop the wood and throw it on the fire or no one will stay warm. There is no doubt or argument that there is a great need for access to health care. The real question is how will a program of this size be paid for or better yet how will it be determined who will pay for this new entitlement program?

A few months ago I was watching a program on a well known cable channel that blends economic issues and current events.  This program promotes discussing and exploring issues such as health care and its affects on the American people. The host of this program was interviewing the Mayor of San Francisco regarding his announcement that the city was going to provide health care for anyone living within the city's limits. This includes legal and illegal immigrants. Time magazine quoted the mayor as stating there are 82,000 uninsured people living in San Francisco. The host asked the Mayor how the city was going to pay for this new entitlement program. The Mayor ignored the question.  The host asked the Mayor once more how his new entitlement program would be financed.  The Mayor had nowhere to hide and gave a smug smile and said not to worry they had everything under control. If I was a resident of San Francisco I would have expected a little more from the Mayor of one of the greatest cities in the world.

Just recently I was watching a different cable channel trying to pick up news that had nothing to do with the presidential election.  As I listened the reporter mentioned that the city of San Francisco was facing financial difficulties and having to close down clinics and begin the process of cutting back services to its residents.  It was hard to catch the details but I cannot imagine anyone being surprised about budget deficits given the condition of our federal and state budgets.  Of course the deficit numbers change from source to source.  The state of California is over 14 billion dollars in the red and our governor has been talking about providing a new health care program for every person in our state regardless of their legal status.  The state has a Democratic legislature and given that we have a Repubocrat (This is a word I invented to describe a governor or politician that has loyalties simultaneously to the Democratic and Republican Parties. It is possible that someone else has coined this term and if so my apologies for claiming that it originated from my thinking) Governor the reality of a brand-new spanking entitlement program may just be realized.  We need to remember that talking about health care for all is the latest political fashion and all the finest political minds have joined in on the controversy. I meant conversation.  At this time we are looking into the black hole of reason.  The federal government has a deficit that would take me longer to write out the zeros than it would to get my 4 year old ready for bed.  There has got to be a financial and political philosophy behind the thinking of these politicians.  There is a philosophy but it is not consistent with anything that makes sense.  To begin with the politician must not be thinking and if they are they are not to use logic or reason.  Let me share some of the reasoning that goes into the craziness of their thinking and planning.  Any politician has to start out with the idea that a health care plan for all is the number one policy that will get them elected or reelected to office.  The politician must be facing a huge deficit be it national, state or local. In addition the politician must promise the program will care for every person legal or not and if the government plan is better than the consumer’s plan then he or she can drop his or her health care plan for the Government’s option.  Last but the most important of all is that the politician must have the most unrealistic plan for funding their specific programs.  One such example is that as soon as the war is settled there will be a saving of 9 billion dollars a month.  There would be a saving but my understanding is our government is borrowing money from countries like China in order to pay for the war. When I think of this I get the old image of a family living in a one room shack.  Snow is falling all around. This man comes to their door with wolves howling outside and the family is dressed in rags. The wife goes to answer the door holding their hungry child and in the background the husband is standing on crutches. The mother opens the door and standing there slightly bent over wearing a black tight suit, top hat and cape covering his face up to his eyes is this greasy man. He is talking through a long skinny twisted mustache demanding in a high crackling voice that this poor family pay the mortgage or they will be tossed out into the snow. Don't get me wrong we should all be responsible and pay our bills but sometimes unplanned troubles have ruined the best plans. The point is we are in debt to the wrong people or more accurately the wrong countries. If our government is not careful our nation will find its debtors like China, Saudi Arabia and others demanding that the United States pay its debts or our country will face foreclosure.

Politicians have suggested that by stopping the war government will be able to take the funding for the war and redirect it to pay for new spending programs like health care. This is completely unrealistic since there is no savings being realized given the fact that our government is borrowing money to finance the war.  Now remember in order for the politician to have a viable plan for health care the politician has to have the most unrealistic plan for funding the program. Ms. Clinton has suggested taxing big business. She would like to start with the oil companies.  We are facing 4 dollar a gallon gas.  The oil companies will take their business to India, China or Japan if the government places new regulations and taxes on those companies in order to generate revenue.  We are using millions of barrels of oil a day.  More than we are producing. This country has not built a new oil refinery in 25 years.  The special interest groups have stopped almost all new drilling and in many cases new research for oil.  Someone needs to tell the Democratic candidates we live in a capitalistic society.  The oil companies will take their business to other markets to sell their products.  California has already experienced a mass exodus of people leaving the state under the leadership of Governor Davis.  His special interest giveaways, unfair taxes on small businesses, unfair energy contracts, his giveaways to the unions and other issues such as his inability to solve the Worker’s Compensation cost came very close to causing our state to go under. The locks on the Governor's mansion had barely been changed before the state started experiencing financial difficulty with our new governor at the helm of leadership. The President is finishing his last few months as the leader of our country and our economy including our national debt in many ways is much worse than when he took office.

As a conservative I am in favor of creating a system where there is access to health care for every legal citizen of this country. I am in favor of our government putting the thumb screws to rich countries like Mexico to begin using their wealth to care for their people. There is nothing morally wrong with this attitude. The only thing morally wrong is that very few politicians in our government have the moral guts to stand up for the Mexican people and demand that Mexico do at least as much for Mexican Nationals as the United States does.  I am not in favor of the economic philosophy, "The Robin Hood System." (The Robin Hood System is a phrase I invented to describe the policy of some politicians to tax or rob the rich to give to the poor. Some call this redistributing wealth.) This program is a simple system that has been used in this country all too often. Simply stated the politicians rob or tax the rich and give to whoever they want and on occasion it has been to the poor. 

The real shame is that no one has ever been able to identify or give a realist definition of the poor. I know a man who owned a mobile home, a nice car and lived off of his social security and a very small pension. He sold his mobile home and moved into a taxpayer subsidized senior housing program where he pays one third of his income for housing and the additional cost is picked up by the taxpayer. This man is not realizing any savings in his decision to move and live in taxpayer subsidized housing. He was living very comfortably in his mobile home but for reasons I think no can explain or understand he made these lifestyle changes and increased his dependency on the government increasing the government’s dependency on the taxpayer. This person was not poor.  He had health care, a nice car, a very nice mobile home he owned and he had money for food, entertainment and recreation. He told me he wanted to have an 8^th floor view of downtown and now he is living in taxpayer subsidized senior housing.  Given the kind of work I did over the years this man’s behavior and attitude is not an isolated case. Over my 30 years of professional experience I have literally seen hundreds upon hundreds of cases where people have for no good reason increased their dependency on the government. I mean the taxpayer.   I think the names and descriptions of these programs that are called government funded need to be changed to taxpayer funded. Changing the names of programs that are called government funded to taxpayer funded may help to educate those who receive the subsidies to understand who is responsible for providing the sweat to pay for their support. Who will pay for the new health care entitlement program?  We know it won’t be my brothers 3 dogs Rex, Cid or Zippo.  We also know it will not be the Government because the Government has no money.  The taxpayer, maybe the taxpayer will pay.  We always have.