Question

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Allen's Blog

So, what do we do with Scott Graham?

He lives in Buffalo, N.Y., and he suffers from Sickle Cell Anemia – he has no insurance.

The local ambulance service has transported him to the Emergency Room 603 times – sometimes twice a day — but that is not as often as he has called the 911 for an ambulance. He says he has called perhaps a thousand times.

So, why doesn’t he call a cab? Well, he would have to pay a cab – but Medicaid pays for the ambulance and Medicaid requires that an ambulance respond when called.

When the local TV station inquired with Medicaid about this abuse of the system, WGRZ reported that the Medicaid people were less interested in the abuse of the system – by more than $100,000 than they were with how WGRZ got onto the story.

The Austin American Statesman reported  that a family of nine has used the Emergency Room of the Luling (Central Texas) community hospital a total of 2,678 times in the past six years.

By my count that is an average of each family member using the emergency room one day a week over that period! (Obviously, some used it more, and some less, but on average…)

Some would argue that is a good reason for universal medical coverage.

I would argue that it is an argument for cutting off medical care for people who abuse it.

Apparently, seven of the family have “mental problems” and eight are illegal drug users.

Tell me again why my taxes should support these creeps?

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The More Things “Change” — The More They Remain The Same

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Allen's Blog

“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.”

Barack Obama (Dreams, p. 99-100)

President Obama has appointed a Czar who was an admitted Communist in the mid-90 – and a left-wing radical of HUGE proportions. He is Van Jones, the new Czar for Green Jobs, officially Special Advisor on Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

(It is impossible to find this information in ANY “old media” outlet – I went through 7 pages of Google without finding anything but right-wing sources. I finally found an ancient, left-wing source written long before the Obama administration was even a gleam in anyone’s eye.)

The New Face of Environmentalism
By Eliza Strickland
The East Bay Express

Wednesday 02 November 2005

…Jones had planned to move to Washington, DC, and had already landed a job and an apartment there. But in jail, he said, “I met all these young radical people of color – I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.'” Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. “I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.” In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.”

http://www.truthout.org/article/eliza-strickland-the-new-face-environmentalism

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From M3

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Allen's Blog

El Universal (Mexico City)  7/27/09

Recurrent violence in Chihuahua

Despite the massive Joint Operation Chihuahua [the combined military & police operation designed to curtail crime in the state] another 21 persons were assassinated in the last few hours in the state of Chihuahua, ten of them in the border city of Juarez. There was also a triple homicide in Hermosillo, Sonora and, in Zamora, Michoacán, two men fell victim to “more than 30 shots” from 38Super and 9mm pistols.

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An Interesting Analysis

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Allen's Blog

WSJ (Opinion):…”Big Government is why New Jersey created only 6,800 private sector jobs from 2000 to 2007—while public sector jobs grew by more than 55,800. Big Government is the reason New Jersey ranks as the worst of 50 states on the Small Business Survival Index. And Big Government is a leading reason New Jersey has a “corruption problem” that an FBI agent at Friday’s press conference characterized as “one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation.”

Sandy McClure, co-author of the book “The Soprano State: New Jersey’s Culture of Corruption,” agrees that big government is a big reason behind the state’s corruption problem. “You have all these little authorities that everyone has to go to for permission,” she says. “Too much government means too many opportunities for officials looking to cash in. And there’s no way that the press can keep track of it all.”

Ms. McClure is right: The more extensive government’s reach, the more opportunities the governing class has to steal from and shake down the productive class. ”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203609204574314691687015238.html

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Go Like Hell

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Allen's Blog

A man who is willing to die at the wheel is always likely to beat a man with a faster car — if he can survive to the end of the race.

Credo of Enzo Ferrari

Automobile racing has been around since the second car hit the street.

Filipe Maasa suffered a fractured skull last week when his Formula One Ferrari ran over a nearly two pound coil spring in the Hungarian Grand Prix throwing it into his helmet, and the week before a driver was killed in F3 cars by an errant tire and wheel.

But racing is a LOT safer than when I lost my racing partner, Paul Cunningham in a 427 Shelby Cobra at Willow Springs, California.

In the late 50s, early 60s, cars were not as good, safety was not stressed (seat belts were optional), and for example, six of the first seven post-war Ferrari factory drivers died racing.

In those days, Formula One had a 25% death rate. Of the drivers who started a season racing, about one-quarter of them died during the season.

Today, racing accidents happen often but drivers usually walk away, unhurt even at 200 MPH, so it simply a freak accident that Massa was so severely harmed. His Ferrari plowed into the tire barrier at 120 MPH, but it was the spring coming off the track that fractured his skull. He would have jumped out of the Ferrari had it just been the impact into the barrier.

Ferrari once had a reputation as a death trap because so many of the factory drivers died – but that was probably because Enzo Ferrari hired the most reckless and fastest drivers who ever pulled on racing gloves.

All racing drivers are scared. Racing is about overcoming fear. I just hope Massa, who only missed winning the world driving championship last year by one point can come back.

Whether he can ever drive again at that level is another question. I retired the day my partner burned to death in his car – and my wife gave me an ultimatum. I had tried to “retire” before — even going through what was referred to as an “Annual Retirement Party.”

I didn’t want to quit, and went through withdrawals – never speaking to my racing friends, stopped going to races or even watching them on TV. I even stopped my subscriptions to Road and Track. Racing is a drug, pure and simple.

I missed the years of the greatest spectacle in sports history – when from 1964-1966 Henry Ford and Enzo Ferrari had a financial falling out, and both funded fantastic teams of cars and the world’s best drivers to fight it out at the greatest race in the world – the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

That saga is the subject of a fantastic book, Go Like Hell by A. J. Baime. That terrific battle of egos, machines and money was fought out at speeds above 225 MPH in rain and darkness for years – while I slept and knew nothing of what was going on.

A great regret of my life. I recommend reading about “life in the (Really) fast lane.”

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I could Not Make This Up

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Allen's Blog
(CNSNews.com) – During his speech at a National Press Club luncheon, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.), questioned the point of lawmakers reading the health care bill.
“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.
“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

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The Man Can Turn a Phrase

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Allen's Blog

To paraphrase George Will: It is hard for Professor Gates to assume victim status when he is a Black Distinguished Professor at the most prestigious university in the world, living in a city with a Black Mayor, in a state with a Black Governor, in a nation with a Black President.

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Remembering the USS Liberty

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Allen's Blog

The attack on the Liberty was never the subject of a valid Navy Investigation (the Navy investigation was literally completed by Adm. John McCain — yes, that one — before the dead crew were even buried), or a Congressional Investigation.

The Officers and crew of the Liberty have requested such a public investigation, but none has been forthcoming.

Unfortunately in the Liberty incident, the OFFICIAL conclusion was announced without any supporting documentation.

The official government position exists. A book, Assault on the Liberty and written years ago by James Ennes, with a forward by the then CNO Thomas Moorer, exists.

A brand new book, Attack on the Liberty written by the son of  a Liberty officer also exists, and a website done by the Liberty officers and crew exists.

The Washington Post comments on the new book, “Scott clearly has his own suspicions, though he produces no smoking-gun evidence to support the charge of a deliberate attack, perhaps because none exists. In that sense, his book is likely to disappoint the conspiracy theorists as much as it angers proponents of the “fog of war” defense offered by Israel. But Scott is wise to leave the speculating to others. The story is shocking enough as it is.”

No public investigation of the attack exists, leaving EVERYONE to question the event. We literally know more about the Cambridge incident from last week, and Michael Jackson’s death last month than we do about the attack on the USS Liberty in June of 1967.

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Government “economics” – Democrat style

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Allen's Blog

The federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is more than $33 BILLION in the red, and has just assumed the $6.2 BILLION pension debt guarantee of Delphi Corporation – a General Motors division GM split off in 1999.

The Wall Street Journal figures that if the third – or fourth, depending upon how you count – of the bailouts for GM, now totaling a cool $70 BILLION.

But even that is not the story – here is the story. The PBGC has the power to CUT the pension benefits they take over, and the cuts are arbitrary. They can cut one person’s benefits a bit, and another a lot, and still another – none. They will cut, because they must — there is no money in the fund and there are more pension problems to come.

What the PBGC has NOT done, is to touch the pensions of the parent company, GM, because those are UAW benefits. GM, or rather the government and the UAW, joint owners of GM, now Government Motors, will guarantee the UAW pensions at 100%.

So, a pension that might in bankruptcy have been court ordered for GM to accept responsibility for Delphi pensions at the same rate as the parent UAW, has been bifurcated. The UAW retains its pensions at the parent company at 100%, while the Delphi “toxic pensions” are laid off to the taxpayers at some lower rate.

Sweetheart deal for the Democrat favorite UAW?

You bet!

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So Sacramento is Happy?

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Allen's Blog

I continue to be amazed by a California media and a public who can look at a $15 billion cut when we have a $26 BILLION deficit, and declare a victory.

Somewhere there still appears to be an $11 billion problem, and one that will simply grow with the continuing revenue dip caused by the continuing recession.

Hello? Is anyone home in Sacramento? No, I didn’t think so.

I do read that the Waste Management Board (commonly called the Garbage Board – where defeated pols are sent into retirement for $132,000+ annual pay) has been trashed. I don’t remember how many more such boards there are – but a bunch.

I suppose we should take solace in that there were no FURTHER tax increases, which was a crushing defeat for Karen Bass, but she will continue her rear-guard action in trying to stop the reforms necessary to welfare and home care – just to name two areas in deep need of reform. A state with 12% of the population with 32% of the welfare cases can just look at those numbers and intuitively see that we have a problem.

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