The US entered the 21st Century in great shape. The economy was running on all cylinders, unemployment was at 4%, the federal budget was balanced and even running a surplus, the CBO estimated the deficit would be at zero by 2012(this year), none of our men and women in the military were dying in foreign lands. Then 10 short years ago the so called "Conservatives" took total control of our government. Within 2 years everything reversed and we had deficits thanks to unneeded massive tax cuts and at the same time two unpaid for wars which killed or wounded tens of thousand of our troops and cost over a trillion dollars. The newly deregulated banks gave us worthless credit default swaps which brought down the whole world economy and caused the great recession. Unemployment went through the roof and the government bailed out the banks to the tune of $780 billion. Add in another trillion dollars for Medicare Part D. The middle class took the brunt of the recession which is why we will not recover until the politicians stop making pledges to lobbyists and put the country first instead of their party and their re-election campaigns. This goes for both the Democrats and Republicans. It is this type of insanity that makes us "numb".
Jeff you are correct in that oil is traded in dollars and as our currency is deflated the price of oil goes up. Since the 1980's it has been gov't policy to devalue the dollar with the theory that our products would be cheaper and in turn US companies would benefit. Unfortunately most of our manufacturing has been outsourced to Asia/India. When the Euro came into existence a decade ago 1 Euro cost 89 cents US and today it costs $1.32. The true cost of a gallon of gas in the US is about $11.50 a gallon. We pay $3.50 at the pump plus about $8 a gallon in military/security costs defending the Middle East etc. and about $2 a gallon in environmental cost. It is time to look beyond just oil.
Oil production in the US is up 18% over the past 3 years. For the first time in decades the US is exporting gasoline and still the price of gas keeps rising. The main reason is the oil speculators on Wall St. are driving up the price of oil using the threat of war with Iran as an excuse. On top of that China and India are demanding more gas to fuel their expansion of automobiles. The Keystone pipeline will bring Canadian sand oil to the Gulf to be refined and shipped overseas not to be marketed in the US. We will get the pollution to refine the oil with no benefit at all. They will use Eminent Domain to take private property for the right of way for this pipeline. The citizens of Nebraska and other states are against it because it will endanger their precious water supplies in the event of pipeline breaks like the one in Montana last year. In 1973 Pres. Nixon during his State of the Union Address said that with the Alaskan pipeline coming on line we would be oil independent in 6 years. At the time we imported 36% of our oil. Today we import close to 70%. Drill Baby Drill will not get us off foreign oil because the US has only 3 % of all the oil reserves. All we need to do is cut consumption by 15% which is what we import for countries in the Middle East. Most of our oil comes from Canada, UK and Mexico anyway. We need to be smart and use all means of energy from solar, nuclear, wind, mileage standards etc. The oil and gas companies own our politicians and have for decades until that changes we will continue to hear Drill Baby Drill and all the BS that goes with it. BP showed us last year how dangerous oil drilling can be when making money is priority one and safety and the environment don't matter.
The US has very good health care providing you work for a great company or are rich. We are the only western nation in the world that ties health care to employment. With health care costs rising at a rate of 9% per year companies especially small business will no longer be able to afford insurance for their employees in the near future. Large city hospitals are already spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year providing health care through their ER's for the uninsured which the tax payer has to pick up anyway. Since Pres. Truman reform has been tried but each time it is squashed by the big insurance companies who right now are spending 1.5 million a day on lobbyists to do it again with fear and misrepresentation. This country is at a crossroads(pay me now or pay me later) after decades of neglect when it comes to health care because more and more will either lose their insurance or will not be able to afford it in the near future. Read the NY Times Sunday Editorial page for today. It breaks down the proposals being debated and how it will affect people of different age groups and costs involved. In order to make an informed decision about this subject people need information not talking points from 24 hour cable TV opinion networks or politicians on either side of the aisle.
I don't know if a gov't run program is the way to go or not. But what I can tell you in just a few years most corporations will not be able to afford the health insurance they provide today. Most polls I read say that 72% of the American people want health care fixed. You may have a great health plan but ask any Steamboat teacher about their's and they will tell you it sucks. If this country can throw away 1 trillion dollars in Iraq why can't it do something for the American people. I don't know one Iraqi who pays taxes in the US and they hate us on top of that.
COBRA is not guaranteed if your company ceases operations and goes out of business. That happened to all 2000+ of us so I should know because I got stuck with the bills like many of us. Most uninsured people use the emergency room for their primary care which is the cause of overcrowding not heart attacks etc. This is not a problem in Steamboat but go to any major city and you will see what I mean. If they had health coverage they would not be there. That is a fact, talk to any ER physician in a major city and he will tell you that. What is better no health coverage or some kind of coverage government or something else?
Health care is not a Republican or Democrat problem it is an American problem that needs to be fixed after decades of neglect. The US spends 19% of GDP on health care when other western countries spend less than 12% and they cover all their citizens and we cover 85%. From my personal experience I can attest that the present system of employer based health coverage sucks unless you work for a Fortune 500 company or you are a Senator of Congressman. This is why 100% of our Congresman choose the Government option over private insurance. Private insurance is increasing in cost by 9% a year so in a few years those that have a good employer based health care may lose it or have their costs and deductables increase dramatically. A government option not mandate may be the way to insure most of the uninsured providing the costs can be made reasonable. Some say this will cost 1 trillion dollars over 10 years which may be true. However this happens to be the same amount of money the government wasted in Iraq in 6 years which so called conservatives never complained about. If you lose your job you lose your insurance. Cobra may be an option but not in all cases like mine. My company went out of business in 2002 and all 2000 employees were denied Cobra. On top of that if you had a claim that had not been processed and paid it was now your responsibility at the non insured rate. In my case the insurance company would have paid $900 but now I had to pay $2500. One of our employees who had a heart attack was left with a $50000 bill. In another case I took my Father who was a disabled Vet to an emergency room in the Houston area at 9am. He was finally seen at 5pm and died a few days later because of internal bleeding. It took so long to be seen beacaue the emergency room was packed with the uninsured. Private health insurance has a 30% administive cost and a government plan would have only 3% cost. The difference is executive bonuses, advertising and whole departments whose jobs are to find ways to deny claims. Also insurance companies are spending 1 1/2 million dollars a day on lobblyists to try and stop a government option which should tell you they are afraid of any competition. I don't know what is the best solution but one thing I do know is the present system stinks.
When Pres. Bush decided to invade Iraq it was to preclude a mushroom cloud from happening over the US as he stated in his State of the Union message in 2003. Unfortunately this was all false and the CIA had told Bush not to use this in his message because there was no evidence Sadam had purchased nuclear material from Africa. After the invasion which was grossly mismanaged it was learned that WMD's did not exist so the goal was changed to make Iraq a secure, unified and democratic country. When this was accomplished then we would declare victory and go home but not before.(Stay the Course) Last year Pres. Bush signed the agreement of withdrawal which is under way. One tillion dollars and 35,000 casulties later all Bush has accomplished besides killing 100,000 Iraqis was to totally destablize the MidEast and make Iran a power to deal with which it was not till our invasion. Iraq is not unified, it is not secure and not democratic in any sense and in fact is governed by a Shiite regime who is in the process of aligning itself more and more with Shiite Iran. This is what will happen after all our troops leave next year. On top of that Afganistan is a total mess and now Republicans want to attack Iran. Having been in a war I can attest that it is not fun. It is easy to be a hawk as long as someone else has to do the fighting and dying. As hawks like Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney said "they and their children had better things to do with their lives than serve in the military." If you want a detail analysis of what the invasion of Iraq has done or not done read "Unintended Consequences" by Amb. Peter Gailbrith at the Steamboat library.
Mr. JLM forgets to mention in his many rants that the US was responsible for removing the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 and replacing him with the Shah. This was to get Iranian oil and in return he would buy military hardware from our defense industry. The Shah was as vicious as Sadam if not worse. When I was in Iran in the 1970's you could see that his days were numbered. This is what caused the Islamic revolution. Thanks to our intervention a democratic country became what it is today. Any chance of change will have to come from the Iranian people and if Obama gets involved old wounds of the past will ruin any chance of success. Starting a third war in Iran as Republicans want is just plain counter productive and stupit. They would be better off taking a vacation in Argentina to cool off.
Eisenhower last comment before leaving office was that beware of the military industrial complex, they will bankrupt the country. He was right and he was a Republican.
Rob Douglas: Has America grown comfortably numb?
The US entered the 21st Century in great shape. The economy was running on all cylinders, unemployment was at 4%, the federal budget was balanced and even running a surplus, the CBO estimated the deficit would be at zero by 2012(this year), none of our men and women in the military were dying in foreign lands. Then 10 short years ago the so called "Conservatives" took total control of our government. Within 2 years everything reversed and we had deficits thanks to unneeded massive tax cuts and at the same time two unpaid for wars which killed or wounded tens of thousand of our troops and cost over a trillion dollars. The newly deregulated banks gave us worthless credit default swaps which brought down the whole world economy and caused the great recession. Unemployment went through the roof and the government bailed out the banks to the tune of $780 billion. Add in another trillion dollars for Medicare Part D.
The middle class took the brunt of the recession which is why we will not recover until the politicians stop making pledges to lobbyists and put the country first instead of their party and their re-election campaigns. This goes for both the Democrats and Republicans. It is this type of insanity that makes us "numb".
May 11, 2012 at 3:01 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Holly Wilde and Russ Doty: Unwanted consequences of the Keystone pipeline
Jeff you are correct in that oil is traded in dollars and as our currency is deflated the price of oil goes up. Since the 1980's it has been gov't policy to devalue the dollar with the theory that our products would be cheaper and in turn US companies would benefit. Unfortunately most of our manufacturing has been outsourced to Asia/India. When the Euro came into existence a decade ago 1 Euro cost 89 cents US and today it costs $1.32.
The true cost of a gallon of gas in the US is about $11.50 a gallon. We pay $3.50 at the pump plus about $8 a gallon in military/security costs defending the Middle East etc. and about $2 a gallon in environmental cost. It is time to look beyond just oil.
March 9, 2012 at 8:29 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Holly Wilde and Russ Doty: Unwanted consequences of the Keystone pipeline
Oil production in the US is up 18% over the past 3 years. For the first time in decades the US is exporting gasoline and still the price of gas keeps rising. The main reason is the oil speculators on Wall St. are driving up the price of oil using the threat of war with Iran as an excuse. On top of that China and India are demanding more gas to fuel their expansion of automobiles. The Keystone pipeline will bring Canadian sand oil to the Gulf to be refined and shipped overseas not to be marketed in the US. We will get the pollution to refine the oil with no benefit at all. They will use Eminent Domain to take private property for the right of way for this pipeline. The citizens of Nebraska and other states are against it because it will endanger their precious water supplies in the event of pipeline breaks like the one in Montana last year.
In 1973 Pres. Nixon during his State of the Union Address said that with the Alaskan pipeline coming on line we would be oil independent in 6 years. At the time we imported 36% of our oil. Today we import close to 70%. Drill Baby Drill will not get us off foreign oil because the US has only 3 % of all the oil reserves. All we need to do is cut consumption by 15% which is what we import for countries in the Middle East. Most of our oil comes from Canada, UK and Mexico anyway. We need to be smart and use all means of energy from solar, nuclear, wind, mileage standards etc.
The oil and gas companies own our politicians and have for decades until that changes we will continue to hear Drill Baby Drill and all the BS that goes with it. BP showed us last year how dangerous oil drilling can be when making money is priority one and safety and the environment don't matter.
March 8, 2012 at 1:17 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Conservative commentary: Let's work together
The US has very good health care providing you work for a great company or are rich. We are the only western nation in the world that ties health care to employment. With health care costs rising at a rate of 9% per year companies especially small business will no longer be able to afford insurance for their employees in the near future. Large city hospitals are already spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year providing health care through their ER's for the uninsured which the tax payer has to pick up anyway.
Since Pres. Truman reform has been tried but each time it is squashed by the big insurance companies who right now are spending 1.5 million a day on lobbyists to do it again with fear and misrepresentation. This country is at a crossroads(pay me now or pay me later) after decades of neglect when it comes to health care because more and more will either lose their insurance or will not be able to afford it in the near future.
Read the NY Times Sunday Editorial page for today. It breaks down the proposals being debated and how it will affect people of different age groups and costs involved.
In order to make an informed decision about this subject people need information not talking points from 24 hour cable TV opinion networks or politicians on either side of the aisle.
July 26, 2009 at 9:59 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
John T. Salazar: Time for health care reform
I don't know if a gov't run program is the way to go or not. But what I can tell you in just a few years most corporations will not be able to afford the health insurance they provide today. Most polls I read say that 72% of the American people want health care fixed. You may have a great health plan but ask any Steamboat teacher about their's and they will tell you it sucks. If this country can throw away 1 trillion dollars in Iraq why can't it do something for the American people. I don't know one Iraqi who pays taxes in the US and they hate us on top of that.
July 20, 2009 at 8:56 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
John T. Salazar: Time for health care reform
COBRA is not guaranteed if your company ceases operations and goes out of business. That happened to all 2000+ of us so I should know because I got stuck with the bills like many of us.
Most uninsured people use the emergency room for their primary care which is the cause of overcrowding not heart attacks etc. This is not a problem in Steamboat but go to any major city and you will see what I mean. If they had health coverage they would not be there. That is a fact, talk to any ER physician in a major city and he will tell you that.
What is better no health coverage or some kind of coverage government or something else?
July 20, 2009 at 6:18 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
John T. Salazar: Time for health care reform
Health care is not a Republican or Democrat problem it is an American problem that needs to be fixed after decades of neglect. The US spends 19% of GDP on health care when other western countries spend less than 12% and they cover all their citizens and we cover 85%. From my personal experience I can attest that the present system of employer based health coverage sucks unless you work for a Fortune 500 company or you are a Senator of Congressman. This is why 100% of our Congresman choose the Government option over private insurance. Private insurance is increasing in cost by 9% a year so in a few years those that have a good employer based health care may lose it or have their costs and deductables increase dramatically. A government option not mandate may be the way to insure most of the uninsured providing the costs can be made reasonable. Some say this will cost 1 trillion dollars over 10 years which may be true. However this happens to be the same amount of money the government wasted in Iraq in 6 years which so called conservatives never complained about.
If you lose your job you lose your insurance. Cobra may be an option but not in all cases like mine. My company went out of business in 2002 and all 2000 employees were denied Cobra. On top of that if you had a claim that had not been processed and paid it was now your responsibility at the non insured rate. In my case the insurance company would have paid $900 but now I had to pay $2500. One of our employees who had a heart attack was left with a $50000 bill.
In another case I took my Father who was a disabled Vet to an emergency room in the Houston area at 9am. He was finally seen at 5pm and died a few days later because of internal bleeding. It took so long to be seen beacaue the emergency room was packed with the uninsured.
Private health insurance has a 30% administive cost and a government plan would have only 3% cost. The difference is executive bonuses, advertising and whole departments whose jobs are to find ways to deny claims. Also insurance companies are spending 1 1/2 million dollars a day on lobblyists to try and stop a government option which should tell you they are afraid of any competition.
I don't know what is the best solution but one thing I do know is the present system stinks.
July 20, 2009 at 3:59 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Rob Douglas: Social media and the 'Angel of Iran'
When Pres. Bush decided to invade Iraq it was to preclude a mushroom cloud from happening over the US as he stated in his State of the Union message in 2003. Unfortunately this was all false and the CIA had told Bush not to use this in his message because there was no evidence Sadam had purchased nuclear material from Africa. After the invasion which was grossly mismanaged it was learned that WMD's did not exist so the goal was changed to make Iraq a secure, unified and democratic country. When this was accomplished then we would declare victory and go home but not before.(Stay the Course) Last year Pres. Bush signed the agreement of withdrawal which is under way. One tillion dollars and 35,000 casulties later all Bush has accomplished besides killing 100,000 Iraqis was to totally destablize the MidEast and make Iran a power to deal with which it was not till our invasion. Iraq is not unified, it is not secure and not democratic in any sense and in fact is governed by a Shiite regime who is in the process of aligning itself more and more with Shiite Iran. This is what will happen after all our troops leave next year. On top of that Afganistan is a total mess and now Republicans want to attack Iran. Having been in a war I can attest that it is not fun. It is easy to be a hawk as long as someone else has to do the fighting and dying. As hawks like Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney said "they and their children had better things to do with their lives than serve in the military." If you want a detail analysis of what the invasion of Iraq has done or not done read "Unintended Consequences" by Amb. Peter Gailbrith at the Steamboat library.
June 30, 2009 at 2:48 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Rob Douglas: Social media and the 'Angel of Iran'
Mr. JLM forgets to mention in his many rants that the US was responsible for removing the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 and replacing him with the Shah. This was to get Iranian oil and in return he would buy military hardware from our defense industry. The Shah was as vicious as Sadam if not worse. When I was in Iran in the 1970's you could see that his days were numbered. This is what caused the Islamic revolution. Thanks to our intervention a democratic country became what it is today. Any chance of change will have to come from the Iranian people and if Obama gets involved old wounds of the past will ruin any chance of success. Starting a third war in Iran as Republicans want is just plain counter productive and stupit. They would be better off taking a vacation in Argentina to cool off.
June 27, 2009 at 2:49 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Local Taxpayer Tea Party is today
Eisenhower last comment before leaving office was that beware of the military industrial complex, they will bankrupt the country. He was right and he was a Republican.
April 19, 2009 at 1:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )