Unsavory?

What say you?  Is the current legislation full of too many "unsavory deals?"

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Is That You Roy Blunt?

On Leadership and Smoking

President Obama had his physical and was pronounced to be healthy overall.

Is anyone but me bothered that he continues to smoke?  Smoking contributes to the health-care crisis in this country.  Obama is the President who wants to bring us Health Care Reform.  It's just not sitting right with me.

Here is one estimate about the costs of smoking:

The data in this book are based on present value of loss for men and women who are smokers at the age of 24. One factor that is distinct in this study is the calculation of “quasi-external cost,” which the authors define as the cost of freedom of choice to the family members of smokers, including children who are nonsmokers. In their longitudinal analysis of lifetime smoking, the authors estimate that the social cost of smoking, which is a sum of purely private, quasi-external, and external costs (the latter determined by excise tax) for a 24-year-old person turns out to be $39.66 per pack of cigarettes. The cost to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security is substantial. The quasi-external cost of smoking to the spouse of a 24-year-old who smokes comes to a staggering $28 billion. After considering these numbers and the amount of people who turn 24 each year and smoke, the authors of this book have predicted that the national external and quasi-external lifetime cost per year is $13.8 billion for females and $32.8 billion for males. Thus, with each new cohort of 24-year-old smokers in the United States there is an additional $204 billion of lifetime costs. These staggering expenses in light of the high number of smokers in the country make a convincing argument for rethinking the issue of public health policy making. Federal and state cigarette excise taxes have increased dramatically over the years. The calculations made by Sloan and his coauthors provide an analytical reason for such increases.

Have you ever known someone who "can't afford" basic things for themselves or their children?  Who can't make their utility payments or pay their court-ordered child support?  Who say they need public assitance such as food stamps to get by?  How do you feel when you find out these same people smoke?  You can go here to see the personal cost of smoking or use their calculator for the cost of cigarettes.  If I smoked 1 pack a day for the next 3 years, I would spend $4730 on cigarettes.


This post won't be popular with smokers.  If you are an individual who chooses to shorten your life with smoking, you live alone, you always smoke outside, and you never plan to use Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, more power to you.  Then then neither me nor anyone else will have to bear the consequences of your smoking.  Except maybe your relatives who will mourn your early demise.

Right now President Obama (like all of the Congressional representatives on both sides, whether they are for government health care or not) has government health care.  I'd be all for Health Care Reform that makes smokers pay more or get fewer benefits.  I'd be all for Obama paying out of pocket for his medical exam and tests today.  Because by choosing to smoke, you are putting yourself at risk.  People understand risk better when it has an immediate financial consequence to them rather than an murky distant threat of poor health.

President Obama, this is an area where you can lead many by your example.  Put down the cigarettes.  Get a nicotine patch, a therapist, an electronic "cigarette" that dispenses nicotine, or whatever you need.  But show people that they can stop smoking by doing it yourself.  It only makes sense when your the guy who wants to change how we do health care.

Troll Alert! Troll Alert!

Sorry, folks, but I've taken the step I wanted to avoid and enabled comment moderation.  It make take awhile for your comments to appear, but I assure you, if they are to the point of the post and not attacking the author or other commenters, they will be posted.  Thank you putting up with this, at least for awhile.

Reconciliation and Lamar Alexander's Memory Loss, Take 2

Reconciliation is a procedure that's been around since the early to mid-70's.  The orignial pupose of it was to balance budget bills, as linked to in this post.  A reconciliation bill can be passed by a simple majority.  That is why some Democrats have wanted to use the procedure to pass Health Care Reform.  It would not require a filibuster-proof majority to get the bill passed.  It would only require 51 votes in the Senate.  The reconciliation process being discussed by Democrats for use with Health Care Reform is exactly the same reconciliation procedure used for passing budget bills.

Lamar Alexander spoke out vehemently this week in opposition to using reconciliation to pass Health Care Reform (see ...Did You Eat Memory Loss for Breakfast?).  One of the many complaints of Republicans about Health Care Reform is the potential costs of the program.

Lamar Alexander has frequently voted in reconciliation process for budget bills that were unpopular with Democrats and many Americans, and had no problem doing so.  One example is the Bush tax cuts, which is why they expire in 10 years.  Any reconciliation bill expires in 10 years.  The cost of these tax cuts?  $1.8 trillion in those 10 years.  Another is the deficit reduction bill that cut Medicaid spending, again wildly unpopular with many Americans (especially children whose benefits were cut, but that's another soapbox).  The reason these bills have the word reconciliation in their title is that the reconciliation procedure was used to get them through.

The Republicans tried to use reconcilation to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of the federal budget resolution in 2006, which Lamar Alexander supported, but failed.

Lamar Alexander also voted for the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, a recoconciliation measure, and certainly a less controversial vote.

So you see, Lamar Alexander only opposes reconciliation when it is used by Democrats for something he doesn't support.  He's full of crap when he says otherwise.

Obama Fail?

Why I Stopped Blogging

Those of you who used to hang out at The Corner know this isn't my first time around the blogging block.  I used to have a blog that was a nice mix of personal and political.  Some of you were regular readers.  We were linked in to Blog Net News, we and even got ranked once or twice.

After the 2008 election, I decided to delete the blog and take a break.  This was for two reasons in equal part.

1.  Time.  I work a full time job. I have two beautiful children, two dogs, a husband.  I'm busy.  I have a life.  It takes a lot of work to keep up with a blog, if you want it to be well-written and relevant.  I haven't had this blog up more than a few weeks and already it's slipping in the quality I would like it to have.

2.  Negative, nasty, rude bloggers.  Seriously.  There are people out there who think that because conversations or discussions are taking place in the blogosphere, it's ok to insult people's intelligence, call them names, send them nasty emails, and be generally hostile.  This attitude started to piss me off more and more, and I finally decided it just wasn't worth the negative energy.

I tell you this because although Reversing the Handbasket is only an infant, it's days may be short.  The things I found dreary in the last days of Corner of the Sky are already dragging me down.  I'm tired.  I don't have enough time.  And the attitudes?  Well, some people just got no clue how to address their fellow human beings.

Hey, Brainless! Did You Eat Memory Loss For Breakfast?

So Mr. Alexander isn't for reconciliation, huh?  Let's see what his voting record says:

2003, Mr. Alexander votes for the Bush tax cuts (Measure title:  To provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 201 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2004).

2005, Mr. Alexander votes for the deficit reduction act, which cut money from the Medicaid budget (Measure title: An original bill to provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 202(a) of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2006 (H. Con. Res. 95).

And those are just two examples.  He also voted for the Tax Increase and Reconciliation Act of 2005, providing for tax cuts on capital gains and dividends. 

Perhaps he was right when he said reconciliation has never been used for something like this.  He only likes to use reconciliation when it helps his rich Republican friends, not regular Americans like us.