yellow-shrub-of-texas – Page 2 – Observations Along the Road

Yet Again, He Gets It Wrong…

Posted onThursday, January 25, 2007Authorcahwyguy

I was listening to the news driving into work today about President Bush’s Health Care Proposal. The more I heard about it, the more I don’t like it.

Under this proposal:

The amount you pay for health insurance will be deductable — up to $15,000 a year for families, $7,500 for single workers.
What your employer pays to provide your health insurance will be listed on your W2 as taxable income.
You can deduct the combination of your employer’s health insurance payments plus what you pay from your paycheck, up to the cap.
Flexible spending accounts would go away.

Although I think the notion of encouraging more folks to have health insurance is a good one, there are good ways and bad ways to achieve it. How Massasschusetts did it is a one way: mandating everyone to have it, and then providing a state plan for lower-income folks. I’ve heard there are problems with that approach.

The approach proposed by the Prez’, to me, is a bad way. Although it will reduce taxes for some (those who are under the cap), eliminating the FSA for those that use it will have the net effect of increasing taxes. For others (i.e., those sick enough or with more expensive coverage) whose coverage exceeds the deductability cap, it will increase taxes. It is also unclear if the taxable income will be increased during the year due to this. This would result in greater withholding, reducing paychecks, requiring folks to file to get the money back. This is always a bad thing.

Bush believes the plan will lower taxes for 100M people. He didn’t note that the plan would also raise taxes for 30M people, or that with health insurance premiums steadily rising, the initial tax savings could disappear for many middle-class workers as the cost of their coverage rose above the caps. Yes, the deductability cap would be tied to inflation, but health costs are rising far faster than inflation. Further, it doesn’t take into account the effect of eliminating the FSA. Remember: FSA coverage is far broader than “medical”: it includes dental, vision, and some OTC pharmacy costs… not all of which are covered by the plans. With the FSA gone, the deductability of those would go back to a percentage of AGI, which is bad. This is especially significant for those that max out their FSAs (“each of them’s going to need orthodonture…”).

There’s another aspect of deductability: typically, that only works for those that itemize deductions. Many people don’t, and thus won’t achieve the benefit of this. This is especially true for renters and those with relatively simple returns.

Bad, bad idea. Luckily, healthcare experts said that Bush’s immediate proposal faced almost certain rejection by the Democratic Congress. But the ideas may live on, so it may be worth writting your congresscritter.

Dress up a monkey in Armani / He may seem precocious and cute / But you still got a chimp in a suit.

Posted onTuesday, January 23, 2007Authorcahwyguy

I felt that reposting the following song from Dirty Rotten Scoundels was appropos today, in honor of tonight’s State of the Union address:

Dress up a monkey in Armani,
He may seem precocious and cute.
Despite all that primpin’,
You still got a chimp in
a suit.

Teach him the second Verse of “Swanee”
And most of “Moon River” to boot.
Sure people will gape
But you still got an ape
in a suit.

Shprizt him ’til wet
With the Eau de Toilette
And you’re still gonna get
A stench.

Dampen him well
In a quart of Chanel,
It won’t cover the smell.
I should know, I’m French!

Take him to see Don Giovanni,
Show him Cezanne’s lovely fruit,
Teach him to cook from Escoffier’s book,
He’s still a gorilla en croute
You still got a chimp in a suit.

So you’ve shaved off his fur,
Decked him out in couture
And endowed him with pure
Saviour Fare
You dressed him up fancy
And trained him to dance, he
Remains a chimpan-cee,
He’s not Fred Astaire!

Give him a dandy little topper,
Tie on a natty cravat
Buy him a castle,
He’ll still be an asshole
And nothing you do will change that
He’s still just a stinky little minkey
In a dinky little suit

And a cheap little hat!

Please remember, National Gorilla Suit Day is January 31^st. Wear your gorilla suit proudly; if you can’t, wear a business suit and eat a lot of bananas.

Hmmm, I could swear I’ve heard something like that before….

Yet Again, The President Doesn’t Understand The Issue

Posted onTuesday, January 23, 2007Authorcahwyguy

According to the New York Times, President Bush in tonight’s State of the Union speech will attempt to prop up his sagging popularity ratings by tackling domestic issues. In particular, the article notes that ‘da Prez will urge that gasoline consumption be slashed by 20% by 2017. How will he encourage us to do this? According to the advance copies of the speech, primarily through a sharp escalation in the amount of ethanol and other alternative fuels the federal government mandates must be produced, with the rest of the reduction to come from raising fuel economy standards for passenger cars.

Wrong.

First, the idea is laudable, but it should target all consumption of fossil fuels, not just gasoline. Gasoline is just a small part of the consumption picture: there is also fuel oil for heating, oil-fired electrical power generators, diesel trucking, and industries that consume oil to make their products, such as plastics, petroleum jelly, and various foods. Going after gasoline is visible, but hurts the everyday voter directly. Going after the industries hurts the pocketbooks that fund the campaigns. Which one to hurt? Which one to hurt?

Second, the first way of proposing to do this doesn’t help. Fine, so we produce more ethanol. That helps the corn growers (read what I said about corporate pockets). Of course, if we don’t have ethanol vehicles, that does no good. There need to be mandates for fleets to have a certain percentage of alternate fuel vehicles–not just ethanol, but biodiesel, fuel cell, and other approaches. There needs to be incentives for research into fuel and fuel cell technologies. There needs to be research into better transportation methods, for ethanol is so corrosive it can’t go through normal pipelines and must be trucked. There also needs to be consideration of the effect of any fuel combustion on global warming. Here, battery technology might be the better answer, but that doesn’t help the farm constituency.

His second avenue of addressing this is pointless as well. Fine, so we raise fuel economy standards for passenger cars. That will make them smaller and lighter; there is always a tradeoff. However, it doesn’t address the big guzzler out there–where is the proposal to raise fuel economy standards for trucks and vans (including SUVs)? Those are the real gas guzzlers. Where is a mandate for a fuel economy benchmark over all vehicles sold by a manufacturer… weighted based on the number of that type of vehicle sold? Where is the push to raise fuel economy standards for other forms of engines: diesel used in the trucking industry, aircraft engines. Not in what was mentioned. These must be considered if we are to reduce dependence.

Further, mandating better fuel economy does no good if folks don’t buy the new vehicles. Where are the incentives for purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles? Where is the improvement in the overall economy so that people can afford these new vehicles? Where are industry incentives to speed-up fleet turnover and replacement with efficient vehicles?

Oh, and where are the incentives in Washington for vehicles used for legislators to be fuel-efficient. C’mon, if California legislators can move to fuel-efficient fleets, which can’t the folks in DC?

He’s also coming at this far too late. The time to get the people behind these controls would have been when the war started, and people were willing to sacrifice. But what is the purpose of bringing it up now? Surely not global warming, because he is not calling for improvements that address that concern. No, it must be because he believes our consumption is the reason prices are high. Of course, we know that’s only part of the issue: there is the punitive aspect due to how we treat most producing countries, combined with the profit motive of the oil industry.

The goal of reducing consumption is laudable. If you’re going to do it, and you want a bump in your ratings from doing it, do it the right way and for the right reason.

Even more so, I feel the sentiments in this post, which I intend to repost tonight in honor of the State of the Union address.

So Many Puns, So Little Time

Posted onWednesday, November 22, 2006Authorcahwyguy

As is traditional this time of year, our nation’s leader has pardoned a turkey in Washington DC. No, not Mark Foley. No, not Dennis Hastert. No, not Dick Cheney. No, not (boy, there are a lot of turkeys in Washington, aren’t there). No, our illustriously leader has spared Flyer and Fryer. These two turkeys were pardoned, and sentenced to live out the remainder of their lives in a park.

According to what I’ve read, the presentation of a live turkey dates back to the Lincoln administration. Lincoln made the last Thursday in November a national holiday in 1863, and that same year, Lincoln’s 10-year-old son Tad burst into a cabinet meeting to plead for the life of a turkey the President had been given for his Christmas dinner (the bird was spared). The current presentation ceremony dates to 1947, when the first National Thanksgiving Turkey was presented to President Harry Truman. As for the pardon, however, that tradition dates only to 1989, when President George H. W. Bush added the show of clemency. The 2006 National Thanksgiving Turkey and its alternate were from Monett, Mo., and were raised under the direction of National Turkey Federation Chairman Mike Briggs, according to the White House. Briggs delegated the day-to-day responsibilities to Lynn Nutt of Monett. One might think they have better things to do.

In any respect, we should be thankful for the news, which permits us to write articles about turkeys in Washington being sentenced to live in parks, with a completely straight face.

But it gets better. PETA is protesting the release of the turkeys, stating that although the chosen birds don’t become part of a holiday meal, they never see the next year’s Thanksgiving because they die in a few months. In past years the pardoned turkeys were sent to a petting zoo called Frying Pan Park. This year the White House said the turkeys will be sent by first-class jet to Disneyland, like last year.

I’m not going to comment on Frying Pan Park (see, the puns get better and better), but on the going to Disneyland. Yes, I can see the commercial now: “So, Flyer and Fryer, you’ve just been pardoned? Where are you going now? We’re going to Disneyland!” Just what we need in California… more turkeys!

Continuing with the article, PETA said that the turkeys have been drugged and artificially fattened so their bodies can’t handle more than 6 months of life. Knowing the health of most children in this country, I have one question for PETA: Why are you protesting the turkeys that have been drugged and artificially frattened, when you’re not fighting the food purveyors who are drugging and fattening up our children and adults? Where’s the priority? However, at least sending them to Disneyland might do some good, as Disneyland is improving the food at the park, requiring vendors to to have kids’ meals that include applesauce or carrot sticks as a side dish instead of French fries, and juice, low-fat milk or water instead of soda. The company aims to remove trans fats from Disney menu items by the end of 2007, and have outside vendors remove trans fats from menus by the end of 2008. So maybe those turkeys might just live longer.

As for the turkeys that remain in Washington, all we can hope is that they will be looking for new jobs come 2009, if the 2006 elections didn’t force a 2007 job hunt.

By Jove, I Think They’re Getting It

Posted onFriday, November 10, 2006Authorcahwyguy

President Bush has lain out an ambitious agenda for the upcoming two-week lame-duck Republican congress. In addition to the work they must do authorizing the spending bills for this fiscal year and dealing with tax relief measures that have expired, Bush has asked them to (a) approve the nomination of John Bolton to the US; (b) approve a bill retroactively authorizing domestic wiretapping; and (c) approve the nomination of the replacement Defense Secretary. The spending bills are a high priority. Congress has so far passed only two of 11 spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, for defense and homeland security programs. It has yet to deal with all other domestic programs, worth some $460 billion. Right now, Republican leaders are leaning toward passing a continuing resolution that would fund federal programs at the 2006 budget year levels into January. This would shift the burden of dealing with these bills to the Democrats at a time when they are moving into the majority and trying to launch action on their agenda. [Of course, it may affect my conference, as NIST is part of the Department of Commerce] Reid has said that Democrats would cooperate with Republicans on three legislative fronts: appropriations, security and tax cuts. Reid said Democrats would support appropriations measures with “fair” spending levels as well as bioterrorism legislation and a package of popular tax cuts that does not include “extraneous” language.

However, it seems the current congress got the message of the election. According to USA Today, Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI) has already said he will vote against Bolton and intends to bottle up the nomination in the Foreign Relations Committee during the lame-duck session. This makes the nomination as good as dead. As for the wiretapping, Democrats have strongly opposed the bill and even Republican leaders indicated it would be difficult to pass during the lame-duck session.

Here’s hoping…

Being Safe from Terror

Posted onSunday, September 24, 2006Authorcahwyguy

On the fifth anniversary of September 11^th, President George W Bush stated that Americans are safer now than before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks five years ago because of steps taken by his administration, noting in his weekly radio address that, “We’ve acted to address the gaps in security, intelligence and information sharing that the terrorists exploited in the 9-11 attacks.”

But are we safer? Not according to the experts. A sweeping assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies, just released, states that the war in Iraq has made global terrorism worse by fanning Islamic radicalism and providing a training ground for lethal methods that are increasingly being exported to other countries. The report represents a consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies (what we call at work the IC, or Intelligence Community).

The report, titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,” was completed and described to U.S. government officials in April but not made public (as the specific contents are classified). The document is what is known as a National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, which is designed to represent the U.S. intelligence community’s most comprehensive treatment of a subject.

Officials familiar with the document have said that the report paints a fairly stark picture of what we all know, and that this is a movement that is spreading and gaining momentum around the world. The report notes that things like the Iraq war have given the terrorists recruiting tools and places to ply their trade and a training ground. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former principal deputy director of national intelligence and current CIA director, has said that the global jihadist movement “is spreading and adjusting to our counterterrorism efforts, and it is also exploiting the communications revolution, the Internet.” He noted that Islamic activists were increasingly identifying themselves as jihadists, and that they were “increasing in both their number and in their geographic dispersion.”

In other words: we would likely have done much better to have finished the job in Afghanistan before we did anything related to Iraq, and we should have made sure we were ready to fight and finish the Iraq battle before we started it. But that’s hindsight, and we’re already involved. Bush is correct when he says “The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.”, but I’m unsure if the administration has the skill and the knowledge to do the job right.

I do think the “War on Terror” is going to be a long one, and it may be a deciding factor in the shape of this century, just as the assassination of an Archduke and the ramifications resulting therefrom shaped the last century. As we look for leaders to get us out of this morass and to take the right approach, let’s look beyond platitudes and speeches, and look for proposals for realistic and effective approaches. It cannot be U.S. vs. them — it has to be us vs. them: in other words, a coalition devoted to rationalism and “western” approaches to conflict resolution, as opposed to one devoted to blind ideology and use of the sword and civilian deaths to enforce your rule.

In writing this, I flashed on my last journal entry, a review of the play Fences. The parallels are apt. Troy Maxson wanted to build fences to keep his ideology in, and to attempt to keep the world out. This is just what the extremists want to do: to use fences of terror to enforce their ideological viewpoints. It didn’t work for Troy Maxson, but in battling the fences, his family ended up damaged. We need to figure out how to fight the fences without our society becoming damaged.

National Gorilla Suit Day

Posted onTuesday, January 31, 2006Authorcahwyguy

I figure one more post was in order in honor of:

I’m also posting this in honor of the State of the Union address. I don’t think the speech would have been improved had President Bush worn a gorilla suit. However, it would have been more entertaining to watch. What do you think?

For both events today, the following song from Dirty Rotten Scoundels applies: