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Recently, I’ve been asked about my thoughts on the push for universal health care. Now, I can quickly say that I agree with the idea of universal health care. I believe that health care should be universal. Ideally, health care would be similar to the way we look at the fire department or the police department.

The difficulty lies in giving my thoughts on the current health care bill. Honestly, I don’t believe I’m smart enough (or have enough time) to parse thru the specifics and determine if it is good or not. This problem is further compounded by the fact that I go to left-leaning media for my information on the bill (just as my conservative friends read right-leaning media for their information). The result is just an argument over talking points that neither of us is 100% familiar with. This isn’t just a problem with health care, but with most issues in politics.

This is my attempt to state my feelings on some of the properties of the health care argument.

Does health care need to be reformed?

Yes, and I can’t imagine anyone disagreeing with health care reform. I think I heard that health care costs have gone up 6x faster then wages. We have a high cost for health care and satisfaction is comparatively low. The big debate is how, and how much, should it be reformed.

Should we tax the rich for universal health care?

Yes, I have no issue with the rich helping to pay for health care for the uninsured. The wealthiest 1% take home 20% of the income in America. I have a hard time feeling sorry for increased taxes so that we can have universal health care. So, increasing the wealthiest 1%’s federal tax rate back to where it was in the mid 90s seems like a fine solution. it’s also a simple solution that isn’t difficult to enact or understand.

Is that enough?

Probably not, but it’s a start. It would be 0.15% of the GDP in the next 10 years, but Iraq & Afghanistan cost more than 1.0% of the GDP in the past 10 years. I think it’s incredible that people don’t question how we will pay for defense and security, but health care is a big question.

Is it OK to ration health care?

Rationing is the idea that you would put a value on life. A treatment that is expensive and would only give someone a few extra months might not be deemed worth the expense. If this occurred, it wouldn’t be offered for those under the government plan. We give life a value in dozens of other government entities, so I don’t see how health care should be any different. It’s cold and ugly, but if it saves more lives by using the money elsewhere, I think it’s probably worth it.

Sources

• Why We Must Ration Health Care
• Room for Debate: Should the Rich Pay for the Uninsured?
• FiveThirtyEight

“Ms. Pelosi was present at a C.I.A. briefing in September 2002 that a recently released C.I.A. account says included discussion of techniques that “had been used” against a terrorism suspect.

That briefing was the only one that Ms. Pelosi attended in person, and on Thursday, she repeated her assertion that the only mention of waterboarding during the session was that while it was deemed to be legal, the technique was not being used.

Source: New York Times

So, on one end we have Nancy Pelosi lying about when she knew about waterboarding, or the CIA lied to Pelosi about their interrogation methods. It doesn’t really matter where the truth lies, because it means that one of the parties is lying. I’m not sure which is worse, the Central Intelligence Agency, or the Speaker of the House. I think I’d prefer if it was Pelosi who was lying, since that is an individual’s mistake, not an entire organization.

The truth is, I don’t trust either one. I’m not trying to disparage either entity with that remark, but I’ve learned that people will lie about anything. It seems that most people lack honesty as a quality.

For example, someone at work will make a mistake, an honest mistake. I’ll correct that mistake and let them know. It’s rare that I’ll get a straight thanks. Normally, I’ll get a thanks and then some insane excuse – “I don’t know how that happened” – “That’s really weird, right?” – “It wasn’t like that when I did it”.

Here’s the thing, it doesn’t matter. Something happened, it’s fixed, let’s move on. Instead, it gets blamed on computer magic or some problem gnome that runs around the office changing things.

These little lies, or refusal to accept responsibility, occur in the most mundane environments. I’m on a softball team that is in one of the lowest levels of the league and I still hear crazy excuses. It has only been two games and I’ve heard players from different teams blame fielding miscues on a bad hop or the sun in their eyes. The truth is, it’s a low-level softball league. I would expect these miscues to occur regardless of the elements. If they didn’t, I’d hope you would be in a better league. I find it refreshing when someone simply states, “I should have gotten that one”.

Honesty is pretty much one of my only qualities that I’ll actively promote as being positive. I have no problem admitting to a mistake. I’ll try my best to prevent it in the future and correct any issue it might have caused. This also means that I’m a bit caustic to people at times. I’m not very good at feigning interest or holding back criticism. On the flip side, any compliment I give is in complete sincerity.

So, what should Nancy Pelosi do? If she did know about waterboarding in 2002, then she should just admit it and apologize for not acting on it. If the CIA did indeed lie to her, then she should stick to her guns and continue to call them out on it.

All I know is this wouldn’t be an issue if both sides were being honest. This is why I think honesty is a valuable commodity.

Less than a month ago, large groups of conservatives protested high taxes. Now, I don’t have any issues with protestors, even if I disagree with their stance. No, what took me off guard was the picture in this article of a child on his parent’s shoulders at a protest.

Source: Morry Gash / Associated Press

This really irritates me. Parents, let your children be kids. There is absolutely no reason a child should be at a protest, unless it’s about a cartoon being cancelled or a sexual predator moving into the neighborhood. There definitely isn’t any reason a child should be protesting over taxes. What do kids pay taxes on? The only thing I can think of is the 5.5% Sales Tax (at least in Wisconsin), which I can’t imagine is affecting our youth that much. If anything, the children should be asking for more taxes so their public school system can receive more funding.

I understand the tendency to press your political ideology on your child, but that will happen naturally while they grow up. I remember in 1992 having an argument with my dad about why Bush is better than Clinton. I was 9 years old and had no idea what I was talking about. I was just disagreeing with him to rile him up. Oddly enough, we didn’t have an in-depth conversation about the economy and foreign affairs.

Finally, that article was written on a Thursday afternoon. So, this kid got out of school to go to a protest. Now, he’ll probably be bad at math and really struggle with algebra in high school. He’ll drop out because the rest of his classmates call him dumb. He’ll turn to recreational drugs to help cope, but will probably end up getting hooked on something harder (or at best become an alcoholic). Well, that’s OK, because at least he was able to have his voice heard about taxes when he was 9 years old.

“Wisconsin now has its own logo.

Gov. Jim Doyle is scheduled Monday to introduce the “Live Like You Mean It” logo and theme line at the Wisconsin Governor’s Conference on Tourism in La Crosse.

Source: Wisconsin State Journal

Yesterday, Wisconsin unveiled it’s new tourism logo and it is awful. I simply cannot get over how awful this logo looks, not a single aspect of it makes any sense.

First, what’s with the font? Are those supposed to be flags or pennants around the W & N, or is it a bird? It almost looks like the Twitter bird sitting on the W.

Next, that slogan is pretty embarrassing. “live like you mean it”. All it does is welcome a lot of “(Insert Here) like you mean it” jokes. I’m sure we’ll be seeing “drink like you mean it” shirts around campus.

Finally, what is with the cartwheel guy? Outside of the obvious keg stand joke, I don’t think “cartwheels” when I think of Wisconsin. To me, this is an acceptable logo for Boys & Girls Club of America or Special Olympics 2016. Instead, this is the logo that is meant to drive vacationers to travel to my state.

“Mr. Daschle withdrew a day after Mr. Obama unequivocally declared that he would stand behind him as his problems over income tax arrears were scrutinized on Capitol Hill. The nominee’s tax issues had developed into a troublesome distraction for the president, who entered the White House pledging to hold his people to the highest ethical standards.
Source: New York Times

Daschle was the second candidate today to withdraw from a high White House office due to Tax reasons.  This, along with Timothy Geithner, makes three Obama nominees with tax issues.  So, are these crooks or just people who made mistakes?

I’m currently in the middle of my taxes this year and I tend to think it’s the latter.  I’m using the H&R Block online Tax Wizard and I’m still getting to points where I simply do not know the answer.  Now, I’m a 25 year old who graduated from a top public university with a 3.5+ GPA.  Thing is, no one ever taught me how to do taxes.  I’ve taken two semesters of Calculous, Statistics and Finance, but nothing about how to do taxes.

It’s not even just Taxes that I was never taught, but other important adult processes.  No one seems to have a very good grasp on how Credit scores work.  I recently fumbled my way thru a home-buying process with getting a mortgage.  All of these things seem pretty important.

This is why I’m not surprised that so many people have gotten in trouble with foreclosures and debt with this lack of knowledge.  It’s also why I’m not shocked to see people of such importance with Tax mistakes.  I think these are the type of issues that need to be taught in High School.  I also think we need to have a Tax system that is a lot simpler.  If major politicians are failing with this system, how is a normal middle class citizen expected to not make these mistakes?