Category: Political

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Government

The Boston TV Story

Sheila points to a good story on the recent Boston ‘terror’ alert, with bomb squad folks blowing up electronic boards with characters flipping the bird. She also has a good comment of her own:

Get a grip and admit you jumped straight to the doomsday scenario without investigating more plausible explanations. It’s not the kids’ fault that Boston — alone — spent $750,000 to defuse cartoon characters that had been decorating ten cities for three weeks.

I’m with the young people on this one. Boston acted like an ass. I liked Portland, Oregon’s take on the boards: the city checked them out, determined they weren’t harmful, and then left them alone if they weren’t on municipal property.

Categories
Political

Ameren Change of Venue

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Ameren has filed a change of venue in the state lawsuit regarding the Taum Sauk dam break. They want the case tried in Reynolds country, rather than St. Louis. The reasons are obvious: Reynolds County has developed an economic dependency on Ameren.

Despite the extensive natural resource and property damage caused by the Dec. 14, 2005, reservoir breach, Ameren would likely get a fair shake in Reynolds County, said District 1 County Commissioner Doug Warren.

“Other than maybe a handful of people, I think most of the people are behind Ameren in this county,” Warren said.

Ameren paid $732,710 in property taxes in Reynolds County in 2006, said County Assessor Rick Parker. Tax receipts from Ameren represented 62 percent of the tax base supporting the Lesterville school.

I think I have an idea who some of the ‘other than a handful of people’ might be, but perhaps the rest of the people of Reynold’s county need to be reminded of what could have happened if the lower dam hadn’t held: chances are support for a Lesterville school would have been moot.

This is one of the problems with school funding in this state. To provide a good, basic education, each school needs a minimum amount of money, but many rural areas don’t generate enough revenue to meet this minimum need. This puts these rural areas at the mercy of a company like Ameren; who, more and more, is coming across as a strongly manipulative corporate entity, well aware that it can pull chains in Reynolds but not here in St. Louis.

The dam break was an unprecedented act of corporate malfeasance. The company management was aware that the dam was operating in an unsafe manner; but they chose not to forgo the profits that would be lost in order to take the dam offline long enough to fix.

No one was killed, but that’s either because a miracle occurred or we had the most amazing luck: pick one.

What did happen is that something very special that belonged to the people of that area–to the people of the state–was forever destroyed. The replacement might be wonderful in itself, but it will never the same. The community will, also, never be the same.

Ameren is playing a ‘big city folk’ against ‘rural folk’ game, basically playing to the economic fears in that area. Unfortunately, our good governor and state legislature aids and abets this by playing their own games with school budgets.

I feel sorry for the folks in Reynolds County, but I also feel sorry for we in St. Louis, and Missourians in general: justice has been given a price tag by people smug in their assumptions of who will, or won’t, pay it.

Categories
Political

The surest indicator

he surest indicator of how things have changed since the election is that Bush came to Missouri today, but the lead story in St. Louis Today (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch online site) ended up being about the winning Powerball ticket being sold in Missouri.

Bush’s visit was relegated to the back pages; along with an interview with the brother of the man who was arrested for kidnapping the two kids who have been in the news too much; a corpse discovered in the ditch in Centerville; a delay in the Highway 40 construction project; and a pit bull mauling in the bootheel.

Personally, I was interested in the Highway 40 construction project delays.

According to the story:

Bush met at St. Luke’s Health System’s Lee’s Summit hospital with a group of small business owners and employees to discuss how his plan would effect them.

Dan Jones, an engineer for a St. Louis-based computer company, said he’s uninsured because he couldn’t afford the premiums, which he said increased to $400 a month.

“That $4,800 (a year’s worth of premiums) is a lot of money,” he said. “That’s money that could go toward a car or a house.”

Bush said the plan would save Jones more than the cost for an insurance plan.

“Here’s a classic case, a young guy in the market place priced out of the individual market,” he said. “The plan helps him.”

Is there a new math involved here? Can someone explain to me how a tax deduction on the first $7500.00 of a single person’s income tax would save more than $4,800.00 a year?

Categories
Healthcare Political

Benefiting the insurance companies, not the people

Bush is making a visit to Missouri on Thursday to push his health care plan. How appropriate, considering that our Republican governor has cut the number of children and other people covered under Medicaid and Medicare. Over 100,000 400,000 were dropped, and I’ll tell you one thing: they won’t be covered under Bush’s plan, either.

Here’s the deal: I as a single person would not be taxed on my first $7500.00 in income, in order to pay for health insurance. What does health insurance run? About $200-400.00 a month for a single person without pre-existing condition. Monstrously more if there is an existing condition–if you can even get coverage.

Now, if I make let’s say 25,000 a year–that’s a tax savings of about $750.00 or so. This will buy me, on average, 2-3 months of so-so coverage under most of the HMOs in this state. All at the cost of those lucky people who have decent health care coverage for their families having to pay more in taxes, just so that I get enough tax saving to not have enough money to pay for my own health care coverage.

Now, if it were enough to actually allow most working people without insurance to get such, they’ll be joining these HMOs and other medical plans, adding to the profits these companies make. However, the quality of care will continue to degrade, as more and more of these organizations are denying even basic care in an attempt to further increase profits.

The health organizations will like it because they don’t have to cover quite as many ‘bums’ and ‘deadbeats’ and, you know, the people who most of the Republicans would prefer to just die, and eliminate the problem.

It is universal health care or nothing. No more Bushian ‘drug plans’ that helped few. No more compromises, and absolving this country of its social duties in ensuring that everyone has basic health care. No more embarrassing ourselves in the eyes of the rest of the world, as the people who put up with this shit from our politicians, and who don’t have the brains to demand better.

The cost to pay for all this really isn’t the problem. What is, is the health care organizations that are overcharging for services that are being underutilized because someone somewhere wants to make a buck off the backs of Americans. There is a Health Machine that doesn’t want universal health care. It’s not because people are worried about you and me, or jobs, or because of increased taxes, and it’s not because of what the country can and cannot afford. It all comes down to profits and quarterly reports and executive bonuses.

The Health Machine: that’s who Bush’s plan is for and to be frank, he’s not welcome in this state. Let him takes his sorry ass elsewhere.

Categories
Political

Just the headlines

Only getting titles in an RSS feed can lead to moments of confusion and disappointment. I read the following headline in today’s St. Louis Today feed:

Former President Bush gets hip replacement.

My immediate thought was: you mean he quit? Then I remembered, oh, his Dad.

I tell you, it was a crushing disappointment.