The Beauty of the Bailout

So one of the things about Washington that I don't think will ever change is that it is full of opportunists. No where in the country is this more apparent than in our Legislative process. No time in the legislative process is it more likely to happen that when all hell is breaking loose and legislation has to be passed quickly. (Quick, for the record, isn't a word that appears in the body of the congressional dictionary.)

Knowing this I decided to wander out to our newly passed H.R. 1424. This bill provides "authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes."

I like economic and financial stability although I'm still hoping it doesn't mean that what we've stabilized is bad credit and people who got rich off of it. I think energy production should be incentivized although I'd like a clearer definition of natural gas (methane gas is natural but do we really want MORE of it?)

I'm wondering how much tax relief we'll really see individually if we are now having to fund an additional 850 billion (for what we've spent on this and the war we could have bought BOTH Iraq and Mexico - solving at least two problems and increasing our tax-base.) I was heartened to see, I think, that the Palin family paid the same amount in taxes as I did in 2007...although I made a bit less. But she has more deductions and lives in a much more expensive location. Oh, and she didn't get a stimulus check either.

It's the "other purposes" I think bear a closer look. So let's see what else the "bailout" gave us.

First, it made some improvements (depending on your viewpoint) to the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. Since Paul Wellstone died in 2002 I was immediately assured that it wasn't specific to his mental health. Which is good because otherwise I think we could be looking for more specific mental healthcare coverage for at least 435 representatives in the House and 100 senators in the Senate. I digress, but only a bit since this is the whole point of the what was the original H.R.1424 before it was changed to make economic stabilization even possible.

In brief, this "rider" makes it clear that limits are based on duration/scope of treatment - not dollars, substance-related disorders have to be included in mental health benefits (does lemon cake addiction count?), prescribes a bunch of minimums in terms of what all health plans must cover, increases medicaid drug rebates, limits certain types of physician referrals (mostly around ones that benefit the referring physician - like a practice run by the referring physician's "Uncle Louis.") and makes Congress responsible for investigating whether or not anyone is paying attention to this little piece of legislation.

Then we get the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 - Title I: Genetic Nondiscrimination in Health Insurance and Title II: Prohibiting Employment Discrimination on the Basis of Genetic Information - (Sec. 202) legislation. Basically it prohibits insurers and employers from forcing you to undergo genetic testing and punishing you in ANY WAY if you do - especially if the results of your tests might suggest you could cost them some extra bucks in the future. Furthermore, if you've undergone it already (or do at some point in the future) they don't get to punish you if the results aren't what they consider optimal. Not in granting insurance and not in determining what your rates are. I consider this piece of legislation possibly worth 850 billion dollars. I'm hoping they fund HHS, Labor, and Treasury sufficiently so that these three Departments can actually enforce their mandate. Oh, and I'm wondering if they've figured out how to test for lemon-cake addiction genetics. Do I have my mother to blame for this (because lately she's become the heir apparent for family blame - so much for personal responsibility dearest brother.) Maybe my father? I blame him for my love of travel, willingness to question what others tell me is truth, and my pot belly. Maybe my lemon-cake addiction comes from him...

The greatest irony, and the part that pleases me most, is that these two riders poke the insurance companies and their greed right in the eyeball. Why? Because insurance companies are part of the financial infrastructure and thus benefit from the economic stabilization act. Good insurance policies help Americans with healthcare and if we do it right we won't have to risk government nosiness into our very personal business. For every pro-choice activist this should come as good news.

There's a lot more that this bill does in the "other category." Things that aren't mentioned in the summary. That's research you'll have to do yourself because this thing appears to be about 451 pages long. If you want more information on the bill (and a chance to see partisanship in action - thank you Financial Services Committee) go here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.1424:


Thank you Paul Wellstone. May you rest in peace.

...

Because it's your JOB!

Last time I checked (which was about 30 seconds ago) US Senators were paid an annual salary of $169,300.

Clearly congress is different than any other place where people get paid a salary. The rest of us, we work. And if we don't work, we get fired. No salary.

So could someone please explain to me why we taxpayers are paying these men salaries while they interview for another job?

We're in a terrible financial situation and at least one senator is "phoning in" while he stumps in Colorado and wonders why Washington can't get their job done.

Um...because it's full of people who don't actually bother DOING their job? The one they are being PAID for?

You're fired.

Brain Cancer in Children

I have a friend named Babs who is one of those special people you don't come across very often. So when she takes on a cause I sit up and take notice.

Recently she asked her AMEX Card holder friends to go to this website:

http://www.membersproject.com/project/view/NN934A

And vote for the project Brain Child.

Every year American Express holds a "contest" for charitable dollars. Brain cancer is personal to Babs. Her mother has been fighting it for several years. Another friend of mine lost her daughter at 12 to this horrible disease. When she told me about it, even though it had been 15 years since her daughter's death, her face still showed horrible anguish and I went to bed that night praying hard that I never face anything like it.

I closed my AMEX card a few years back so I'm not eligible. But one I thought that maybe folks who read this might be.

Please, Don't Rescue Me

There are moments in my life that stand out so crisply in my mind that if I could paint them, I would. I long for the camera that captures what only I can see.

I live less than half a mile from the Pentagon. It's an impressive place. Clearly built for protection and not rescue. Every day men and women in uniform walk the sidewalks past my apartment on their way into work. I want to lean out the window and say thank you.

One of those brain-picture moments is from the 9/11 search and recovery at the Pentagon. It was evening and I was down with the care and feeding efforts for the S&R folks who were working at the site. The air was chilly and strangely silent for all of the activity going on around us. More than an hour had already passed as I'd repeatedly watched man after man come down from the building, weave their way through the debris and ground operations and make their way to the tents we called "Unity City." Inside those tents we had all the things that people give to those who are doing the unimaginable.

S&R uniforms have pockets. Lots of pockets. And our tables included candy and lots of it. They'd come to these tables, load up with candy and then head back up into the building. The candy in their pockets would help cover the taste and smell that filled their mouths and nostrils as they dug through the burned and still smoldering remains of the plane & Pentagon victims of 9/11.

I hate crowds. The reason I was there was to help plan some next steps in our organization's response. But I needed to get away from the activity and the awesome emotion of it all. So I wandered off for a bit, quietly chatting with Gerald and processing all that I was seeing. As we talked I looked up at the gaping hole in the side of this amazing building and I stopped...

...this is the picture.

A smoldering, gaping black hole in the side of the Pentagon and hanging from the roof next to it an American flag. Framing this, a starless Washington DC night sky with the Washington Monument glowing in the background. A cold breeze nipped and kissed my cheeks and I could feel my hair fluttering against my neck. I was spellbound.

I stood there staring and Gerald looked down at me and seeing what must have been an ashen face, asked "are you okay?" I told him I was. Compared to so many others that day, how could I not be?

But inside I was screaming "no, I'm not okay. WE are not okay. THIS is not okay."

The people killed in the Pentagon that day died at their desks, in meetings, on the phone, doing whatever it was that they did in performance of their jobs - jobs that were essentially this, to protect the United States of America and her citizens within.

No one will argue that they did their job perfectly every day. But they did it. And they died doing it. Mundane every day jobs for most of them. Jobs they rose for early in the morning, fought traffic to get to, and I'm sure they never thought would get them killed.

I think that there are a lot of people who look at the U.S. Government as somehow responsible for rescuing them from whatever it is they need to be rescued. Me? I want the government to help us be a better nation and to protect my freedoms while they protect us from those who don't want us to be better...or free.

I want the deaths of those people to not have been in vain.

So please, don't rescue me. Instead, protect. Protect us all. Protect us from our greed. Protect us from our neediness. Protect us from our willingness to follow blindly those who promise to rescue us from ourselves. I don't need rescuing.