beterwas
honestly misbehaving
Archive for Musings
October 5, 2009 at 5:53 pm · Filed under Call Bullshit, Musings
Apparently there are a group of people out there are tired of the liberals treating gospel like it’s, well, gospel.
The young white men neoconservatives at Conservapedia have determined that various translations of the Christian Bible have been progressively progressive, and have also made attempts to “dumb down” the text.
Oddly enough, at the same time, they complain that liberals are inherently “wordy,” and as such, have imbued the Bible with too many lengthy words. How they plan to address the “dumbing down” and “too many big words” issues simultaneously should prove to be a neat trick.
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September 3, 2009 at 5:42 pm · Filed under Musings
Matt Taibbi does it again.
The system doesn’t work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it’s a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they’re sick with incurably expensive illnesses.
The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that’s the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won’t get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.
Why doesn’t he have a Pulitzer, yet?
Read the rest of the story here.
July 30, 2009 at 5:03 pm · Filed under Musings
This is almost not funny.
Almost.
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June 21, 2009 at 3:07 pm · Filed under Confound Authority, Musings, Raise The Debate
Every day is a shite storm in Muncie, it seems.
Yesterday’s StarPress featured an article on the City Council’s plans to introduce new LOIT taxes, in an effort to bridge our City’s funding gaps.
You can imagine the reaction.
Like everyone else, I don’t enjoy paying taxes; any more than I enjoy paying for utilities, gasoline, medical bills or anything else. Like those other things, though, I recognize both the necessity and the benefit of paying for them.
I meet people every day that say to me “government produces nothing,” or make comparisons between taxes and “reaching into your neighbor’s pocket;” and quite honestly, it frustrates me. I understand that there is an anger and anxiety that drive such sentiments, as well as a sense that our tax dollars are being wasted at every turn; and to some extent, there is validity to those feelings.
But there is also an irrationality behind them. To say that government produces nothing suggests that roads, schools, public safety, rule of law, etc. would just magically materialize on their own. To compare paying for public services to robbing your neighbor suggests that we don’t have an obligation to support public services; but rather that they are an entitlement of sorts. And while no one can argue that there isn’t fraud, waste and abuse when it comes to local government’s stewardship of tax dollars, the picture that is painted is at best a caricature – the waste comprises a small portion of the overall budget, not a majority.
The other comment I hear oft-repeated has to do with local government “living within their means,” and “living on a budget, like the rest of us have to.” The fundamental problem I have with those attitudes is that the two represent very different dynamics. Managing your personal finances revolves around making decisions that best benefit you, personally – it is a “me” proposition. Government operations, on the contrary, are about providing collective services and managing the things individual citizens can’t manage themselves – which is more of a “we” proposition.
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May 12, 2009 at 11:06 am · Filed under Musings
Mayor Sharon McShurley said this week: Muncie must cut $2.1 million NOW or go broke by November.
Why is it that the city must cut $2M? Why can’t the city raise $2M?
That’s the real problem with this Mayor. She lacks vision and leadership; but more importantly, she refuses to even hear, let alone consider any ideas that come from outside her small circle.
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April 14, 2009 at 10:23 am · Filed under Musings
I’ve had some interesting exchanges with posters to the Star Press website. One recurring trend is people that have, at best, a limited understanding of how government works, offering up quotes from various texts to support their unqualified positions.
What I find funny is that those same people haven’t actually read the books they quote from, and as such, don’t realize that those writings don’t actually support their position at all. Read the rest of this entry »
April 6, 2009 at 9:53 am · Filed under Call Bullshit, Musings, Raise The Debate
Jim Arnold writes:
I have been painfully pondering words with which to pontificate on the current legislative session that has failed to lock in property tax caps, failed to endorse the Kernan-Shepard recommendations and has proposed an unprecedented one-year budget that spends $800 million more than anticipated revenues.
Words that illustrate our legislators’ poor performance include appalling, atrocious, dismal, disgusting, dreadful, horrendous, pathetic, lackluster and lackadaisical.
Prose that paints an appropriate picture of the mood of taxpayers contains words like, angry, annoyed, perturbed, disturbed, enraged, irate, incensed, fuming and furious.
Jargon to describe taxpayers’ disposition include swindled, scammed, snookered, bamboozled, fleeced, flimflammed, hoodwinked, hornswoggled and hung out to dry.
Citizens reluctantly deferred protest when HB 1001 raised sales taxes by nearly 17 percent, as we were promised property-tax caps in the bargain. Many were skeptical when the sales-tax increase was immediate, whereas the corresponding tax caps were scheduled to be phased in over three years, but we held our tongues in the hopes that our legislators would honor the promise of HB 1001.
If any of the words listed above describe how you feel about the current legislative session and your middle name isn’t Apathy, please contact your legislators by phone, letter or e-mail and remind them that they work for us. Ask them to pass Senate Joint Resolution 1 to lock in the property tax caps, review the Kernan Shepard recommendations and pass a two-year balanced budget that demonstrates fiscal responsibility.
Or maybe they hear what you’re saying, but have determined that you are wrong.
Why does no one ever want to consider that possibility?
The job of legislators is not to do what the voters tell them to, for better or worse; but rather to study the issues and make the decision that he/she believes best represents his/her constituents’ interests. Read the rest of this entry »
April 4, 2009 at 9:47 am · Filed under Musings, Raise The Debate
Day after day, I hear and read comments from people going on (and on) about “wasteful spending;” and how the real problem with our local government isn’t that they lack adequate revenues to operate effectively, but rather that they spend too much money on things we don’t need.
Don’t mistake me, if there is wasteful spending, it needs to be curtailed. At the same time, to many people, wasteful means “doesn’t benefit me.” The amount that should be spent on public services appears to be equally relative. An oft-repeated phrase in such conversations is that “I have to make cuts and sacrifices at home, why shouldn’t the government have to as well?”
There are, however, some benefits that are necessary for a healthy community, and the cost of those programs are irrespective of taxpayer income. Just like your electricity bill: It remains the same, regardless of how your income changes.
We have to keep our community moving forward. If that means digging a little deeper during tough economic times, then so be it. People want to make comparisons to the need for cutting back, but they don’t want to address the flip side of that equation: That you do what you have to in order to survive.
Another aspect of this rather pervasive attitude is semantics. For example, economic development monies are invested, while money for education is spent. Most of the people that speak out on spending are not savvy enough to evaluate the effectiveness of economic development investments; but they can all seem to agree that when money that is being spent, it’s too much. Read the rest of this entry »
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