Saturday, June 30, 2012

GOP Fanatics Are Only Hurting Americans

By now, I'm sure the whole country is aware that the Supreme Court of the United States has (more or less) upheld the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. This isn't stopping Republicans from fighting it; if anything, they have only been invigorated in their efforts to kill the ACA.

Many GOP leaders have redoubled their efforts to deny health care to the masses. In this article, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell said that the decision "marks a fresh start on the road to repeal". Senator Rand Paul goes as far as to question the validity of SCOTUS's decision, saying "just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so". It's interesting that when the decision goes their way, the GOP seems to believe that the Supreme Court's word is absolutely unquestionable. Clearly their opinion has changed.

Even more harmful than rhetoric, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal refuses to implement Obamacare even after the ruling by the Supreme Court. The ACA does allow until 2014 for states to set up health care exchanges, even though people desperately in need of health care obviously would like their state to move more quickly than that. Instead of going forward with this, Governor Jindal has decided to put his efforts into making sure Mitt Romney is elected to repeal the law. Clearly, this is not helpful to the citizens of Louisiana. Jindal, along with many in the GOP, has decided to completely abandon any semblance of trying to make economic progress in this country in order to launch a full scale assault on Democrats in the fall. This not only affects those in need of health insurance, but the country as a whole that needs the full attention of all its leaders at this critical economic juncture.

Certainly, this will be the GOP's excuse for not getting anything done until the election. They are "putting their efforts into a full repeal" even though it is clear that that just isn't possible at this time. This means that they will accomplish absolutely nothing, and the GOP's base will absolutely eat it up. I suppose one could view this as a genius move by the Republicans, though the only reason it can work is because it is what their base wants. To get rid of Obama and his signature piece of legislation at any cost, even it it means completely paralyzing the country until at least November.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/29/3682585/kentucky-sen-mcconnell-vows-to.html#storylink=cpy

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Generosity Is Now A Crime

Now, a majority of my posts here are political; it's hard not to have it that way, considering that so many politicians do and say so many ridiculous things.

However, it's refreshing to be reminded that people outside the world of politics can be just as stupid.

Apparently, a man in Ohio was issued a $344 littering ticket after accidentally dropping money on the ground out of his car window while trying to hand it to a panhandler.

I can picture the entire scene in my head: the man tries to hand the money over and misses. The dollar slowly floats the ground. The police office behind him has his hand hovering over the controls for his lights, and flips the switch as soon as the money hits the ground. I always find it annoying when an officer seems to set his focus on a person, looking for any reason to pull that one person over. While ignoring 10 other obvious, and more dangerous, crimes that are probably going on in the immediate vicinity at the same time. I can't think of any better way to describe what seems to have happened here.

Now, it should be said that it is actually illegal (at least in Cleveland, where this happened) to solicit money or to give it on the side of the road, as was done here. So, maybe this ticket wouldn't be so ridiculous, if that was what the ticket was actually for. Instead, in the officer's single minded pursuit of this man, he went with the first offense he could think of.

In the end, the ticket was dropped, as the city "decided the cash didn't qualify as trash". My only response is... really? I hardly think Cleveland has a big problem with people throwing large amounts of cash out of their car windows. No rational person would have called this littering.

Well done, police. Way to make people even less likely to be generous with those in need. In a society with an alarming amount of real crimes with real impacts on people's lives, it's good to see that cops have their priorities in order.