what kind of absurdity do you adhere to?

Posted at June 19, 2008 9:45 PM in response to McCain Campaign: Obama's Public Finance Decision "All About Money"

Make no mistake--there are many children and adults who are in desperate need of effective, safe psychiatric medicine to have even a reasonable semblance of a normal, functioning, productive life. The sad thing is, after all the money big pharma spends on advertising Strattera or Cymbalta or whatever the drug du jour may be, far too many of them STILL suffer side effects and only partially relieved symptoms from those drugs they can get, or can't afford access to the most effective ones. As a mental health therapist for over 15 years I have met far too many kids who just needed good nutrition, lots of exercise, behavioral modification, parents who were not exhausted from trying to make a living and teachers who were informed and had smaller classrooms to manage--not drugs. But the stuff I mentioned above is more difficult, more expensive and quite frankly, also not researched enough to be widely available. So here come the scrips.

This kind of thing is exactly why all health care, pharmaceuticals, insurance and medical research needs, at the very least, to become completely "not-for-profit" in it's focus, and heavily regulated/overseen by a science-oriented government agency (eg, NIH, once we reform the Bushification issues)

Posted at June 9, 2008 3:00 PM in response to Today's Must Read

Living here in NM, I can promise you that Heather Wilson would have given Udall a far closer race that Pearce. She didnt' lose to a more moderate, more acceptable statewide candidate at all. Pearce is a extreme right wing, Bush-rubber stamping Republican than Wilson--which is why he won the Primary. New Mexico's Republican party has experienced a flight of moderates, and is now mainly made up of pro-oil, anti-environmentalist, "Club for Growth" free marketeers, with a frosting of the religious right's "traditional conservative values" voters. The big money, however, is in our ranching/oil rich eastern part of the state, (which really should just become Texas) where Pearce is from.

I can't wait to wipe the floor with his goofy, gap-toothed face in the fall.

Posted at June 4, 2008 10:18 AM in response to Republicans Pick Right-Winger In Key Senate Race, Make Seat More Vulnerable To Dem Takeover

Seeing as KKKarl doesnt' mind "written" communication, then he won't mind it being through the use of instant messaging, where the congress can bombard him with 20 questions at a time.

Posted at May 14, 2008 10:00 AM in response to Rove to Congress: Let's Be Pen Pals

Evainne: "Last time we had the war hero and their 527's made him into a coward, liar and fraud. Why don't we have similarly nasty 527 like organizations who can work similar angles against McCain?"

Because as tempting as it is to win at all costs, that's what Republicans do. It was then, and always will be, wrong to trash our war heros.

Stay focused on his policies, they're all we need.

Posted at March 30, 2008 3:48 PM in response to Clinton: I'm In Until Denver

As to Clinton going nuclear next week: looks like it's already starting with this Washington Post "Fact Checker" smear on Obama:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/29/AR2008032902031.html?hpid=topnews

Posted at March 30, 2008 3:39 PM in response to Gallup: Obama Ahead Of Hillary By 10 Points

Stop and think: America's "wealth" is actually driven by materialism. The evils of the money lending industry are evidence of the fact that it is not a gift, it's a burden, and will never be eradicated without our willingness to be honest with ourselves.

All the things Elizabeth talks about in this blog are absolutely important, and we should be demanding answers from ALL our politicians about how they are going to ease these burdens on Americans. However, pulling the top off a weed doesn't kill it--we need to get to the root of the problem. Americans need to reassess our spending habits, and consider---EEE GADS!!--lowering their standard of living. If we all decided that for the next year, we wouldn't buy anything we couldn't afford out of our paychecks, we could begin to starve the beast that is not only killing our middle class, but destroying our characters. IN ORDER TO PUT THESE FOLKS OUT OF BUSINESS, WE MUST LOWER OUR STANDARD OF LIVING!!!!

Awhile back, it dawned on me that the economic stars have been aligned so that for people like us who live on a true middle class income (72K/yr, family of six), it is almost impossible to have a modestly decent standard of living that includes even reasonably limited purchases such as furniture, appliances, home improvements without going into unwise forms of debt in some way.

My husband and I have spent many years struggling to pay off our cards. During times our income was a little higher, we would try to simply not use them and pay down the balances, or have even gotten consolidation loans that have a guaranteed interest rate and a realistic payoff dates as a way to get rid of these monsters. But as we had more kids, and the cost of groceries, daycare, clothing, utilities and gas went through the roof over the past few years, we had to use credit cards just to survive even with two incomes.

After I lost my job a few years ago, we pretty much destroyed our credit rating and ended up finding ways to settle our debts. The silver lining of it was two-fold: We can no longer get easy credit, and I decided that I needed to work in a field that paid me enough to live comfortable. So I started retraining in nursing. With less household income, we HAD TO just quit buying anything we couldn't afford on a cash basis. It sucks, believe me. We literally live paycheck to paycheck, and often have about 20 dollars in the bank three days before payday, and no milk in the fridge. The kids get the minimum in clothing and extras. We camp in the national forest once a summer for vacations. We have yard sales for extra cash. Our house is a true "shit pit", not a showcase home, and is falling down around our ears. Our furniture is nasty, and we need to do some serious home improvements, but screw it. Our lives are plenty full with our kids, their activities and friends, school, and work responsibilitites. If someday I make enough extra money to buy "the stuff", we'll buy "the stuff", but for now, this episode of our lives has been an excellent education in how little people need to survive.

We have created a society where we are in debt, cradle to grave, and everyone just accepts it as the way things are, and thereby continues the tradition. Why is that? What if we all had to do something else with our time than work and shop?

Posted at August 17, 2007 12:19 PM in response to Edwards Advances Credit Issues

This is such a great thread, I had to come back and see what others were saying, and need to respond to a couple of comments:

To Ellen:

I think the government pays around $400/month, but we pay the total premiums for dental and vision. (We are on the least expensive HMO in NM, with the next costing about $100/ month more.) Here in NM, Federal Employees are actually not that big of a group, so in some ways we don't get as much of a break on our insurance package as say, our state education or university employees do.

Even so, we are extremely grateful we have good coverage. I know that this is not the deal most people have, and I think it is an outrage. In our 25 years of marriage, my husband was in the military for the first 4 years, and we used the military health care system for our needs. But when he got out, while we both looked for work and finished school, we had NO insurance for almost 3 years, and with our oldest a small child, it was a time of great anxiety and fear for us. Every medical cost was completely out of pocket, and we were barely bringing in around $700 a month, a $500 emergency room visit was a financial emergency. Back in those days, even though we were both working and making he equivalent of minimum wage, we didn't qualify for any public medical coverage at all, which today would not be the case--our son at least would be eligible for medicaid. It wasn't until my husband finally got into the civil service that we finally had insurance coverage we could afford and count on for our whole family.

To John:

The whole point of Universal Coverage is for the federal government to pool its multifaceted resources in order to cover everyone equally, and reduce these premiums and copays for the citizen. I have no problem with paying a reasonable amount of my income for health care. And believe me, I don't use my HMO any more than I have to, but when we need it, it's there and it's at an affordable price that doesn't present us with bankruptcy. I get so angry when I hear people talk about "personal responsibility" and "the power of market forces" when it comes to the life and death issue of health: so, if my son has torn cartilage his knee, I should just let it go and allow him to be physically disabled for the rest of his life because I can't afford the 10K surgery to repair it? Or if my daughter inherits a fatal liver disease and I can't afford the transplant costs, I need to run bake sales and fundraisers, crossing my fingers she doesn't die in the meantime? What do they think we have in terms of real choices in the health care market place?

In this day and age, health care should no longer be considered optional--any more than electric power generation, maintaining the public highways, clean water, public safety, k-12 education--where in the world did we decide that government should play no role in pooling and directing our resources for the common good?

Posted at July 4, 2007 9:44 AM in response to Sicko and the Health Care System: It’s Not About Values

I would love true universal health insurance coverage, but in the meantime, why cant we try something that we already know works, and tweak it a bit to make it even better?

My husband is a middle income (70K/ yr) federal employee in New Mexico, and we have six in our family who live on his income, so in some ways we are very blessed--out of many different traditional and HMO-type plans, we chose a local HMO/PPO plan that has pretty decent coverage, and since it is a small world out here, almost all our local providers are on the plan. The monthly premiums are around $225, which comes off the top of his bi-weekly paycheck pre-tax. We also just purchased (for the first time) separate dental and vision coverage (around $80 total for both) hat is also taken pre-tax. Our co-pays for office visits are 15pcp/25 specialists, and the prescription coverage is 7/15/35 depending on tier. Because our state and the FEHB demands certain services must be covered by all plans, we don't have to worry about not being covered for things like mammograms, birth control, cancer treatment, etc. My only complaint is that the Federal government doesn't have to cover my college student who turned 22 this year--even though our state mandates all other insurance providers to cover dependents through age 24. I am terrified that my son will have an accident or come down with a serious illness before we can afford to get him coverage that goes outside his college health center/insurance plan (which is not in effect during the summer, for example).

So, here's my question: Short of government funded universal coverage, at the very least, why can't the entire nation have a similar set of plans we have offered to them? With these plans, there is the "choice" element all the rich Republicans want--you pay more if you want total choice, pay less if your'e wiling to use a local HMO. If your'e really rich you can choose to forgo any coverage at all. Forget medicaid/medicare and all the rest-- If we combine government oversight/administration, mandated minimum coverages, with the inevitable expansion of the pool of insured, I am willing to bet that that alone would make coverage affordable for almost everyone. For those who are needy, we should pick up some or all of the tab for the premiums and co-pays. And it all should be portable, so if we go on vacation to another state, we are not sacked with a gigantic, uncovered bill in case we seek health care. Everybody is covered, at the same minimum levels, the government negotiates and enforces the contracts. Simple.

Dennis Kucinich is right--anyone with a brain who has to balance their own checkbook and pays their own bills knows that. Instead of the patchwork quilt of coverage levels and the incredible amount of waste caused by overhead and administration that gets repeated in every plan, we could take the savings and shove them right back into getting the best health care system in the world.

Posted at July 3, 2007 10:06 AM in response to Sicko and the Health Care System: It’s Not About Values

Annual fee scams can come in many ways, often rigged so that the credit card user "accidentally" goes over the credit limit or establishes a late payment for the fee.

My 22-year old college student has a $200 Capital One card for gas, emergencies,etc. that applies his annual fee in $3.00 installments each month. Last fall, he paid it off completely, and has never used it since. He just got a call saying he was 3-going on four- months over due, and now owes over $100 in late fees!!!!! Needless to say, he is cancelling that card.

Posted at January 30, 2007 12:05 PM in response to Mystery Credit Card Fees