America is not broke.
Pass it the hell on.
Monthly Archives: March 2011
His Welfare Is My Concern
Imagine the howls of Teabagger outrage if this song were recorded today.
And We’ve Often Rewound the Clock
A few nights ago, I couldn’t find Topaz anywhere. She didn’t answer when I called from the bottom of the attic steps, she didn’t bound from under a table or behind the couch. I opened all the closed doors and waited for an indignant kitty to give me what-fer, but nothing happened. Finally, I stood in the living room, looking around, calling her name. Suddenly, she was right where I was looking: perched on a pillow, staring at me. Topaz went from Full Kitty Invisible to Regular Kitty Visible right before my eyes and I have no explanation for it. The next morning, Topaz slipped past me unnoticed as I walked in from feeding the outside cats. Later, when Pete opened the kitchen door, Topaz buzzed past him, skidded to a stop and said, “Uh…thanks” on her way to wherever it is Topaz goes.
Just about every day, Chris Christie plumbs new depths of pointless bullying. This one affects me directly.
Pension and health benefit reform will be high on the agenda in Trenton this spring. Christie wants all public employees, state and local, to begin paying 30 percent of their health insurance premiums starting next fiscal year. Currently, public employees are required to pay at least 1.5 percent of their salary toward health benefits.
Christie has warned that if Democratic lawmakers refuse to go along with his proposal, or a similar plan, he would not be able to deliver an additional $190 million in property tax relief to seniors and middle-to-low income residents.
State Sen. Stephen Sweeney, (D-Gloucester), wants to phase in the increases over seven years and apply the rates on a sliding scale based on a employee’s salary.
Under Christie’s plan, a teacher who makes a $66,000 salary would pay about $5,200 a year for health insurance. Under Sweeney’s plan, the same teacher would pay about $3,610.
In general, public employees with 25 years of service can retire and receive medical benefits at no cost, but that would change under both Sweeney’s and Christie’s plan.
Current retirees, including those who retire before any proposal is enacted, would be protected from the changes. However, Christie has suggested he is willing to make some adjustments retroactive, even if it prompts a legal challenge.
Four things about this article:
Waving around a number like $66,000 makes it sound like every first year teacher’s aide might make that, which is ridiculous and inflammatory. In a just world, teachers, fire fighters, mail carriers, EMTs, nurses, sanitation workers, home health care workers and childcare providers would be paid what their services are worth to society, instead of the least society can get away with. Jacking retirees for their lunch money ought to bring us shame, but no. A whole lot of people just like me may be wondering if we’re going to die at our desks, if we still have jobs.
Lately, I can’t turn on the radio without Cheap Trick warbling Surrender. But we can’t.
There’s A Chance That You Won’t
Oh for crying out loud, Hell’s frozen over and Richard Mellow Scaife says something not vile.
Republicans wrong on Planned Parenthood
Is that a monkey flying out of my butt?
Now the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives – urged on by conservatives opposed to abortion – has voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
On this issue, Republicans and conservatives are dead wrong.
Wait – is that beggar riding?
Abortions are a minor aspect of Planned Parenthood’s mission to provide reproductive health care, education and other services to Americans, regardless of income.
More than 90 percent of its work focuses on preventing unintended pregnancies that almost inevitably lead to unwanted, neglected and abused children.
In Pittsburgh and across America, Planned Parenthood offices help people to make better decisions about whether to have children. They help to arrange adoptions for women or couples unable to raise a child but unwilling to end a pregnancy.
Most of their clients are poor Americans who cannot afford birth-control measures that cost as much as $1,500 a month.
Flying pigs are actually a GIANT PAIN to clean up after.
Of course, no one wants teenagers to get pregnant. Yet far too many do — and they need reliable, honest advice about what to do next. For many of them, Planned Parenthood is the only reliable source of that advice. For many others, Planned Parenthood is the only safe, reliable source of counseling to avoid getting pregnant in the first place.
If not for Margaret Sanger’s vision and bravery, many poor Americans would have no place to turn for birth-control measures and counseling or for other health-care services.
To take that away makes no sense.
It’s interesting that Scaife’s arguments in favor of Planned Parenthood are mostly the same ones the forced birthers use against it. I didn’t see that coming. He does tell us why the compass needle is pinned on S.
My grandmother was a friend and a supporter of Margaret Sanger, one of America’s earliest, most effective advocates of birth control.
I met Sanger several times before her death in 1966 and was impressed by her intellect and her commitment to many issues, not the least of which was enabling every woman to be “the absolute mistress of her own body,” as she put it.
In other words, Scaife feels secure in his authority. He is his favorite right kind of people. This generosity extends to Grandma and by extension, to a friend of Grandma’s who met his right-kind-of-people criteria. I don’t particularly love how Scaife got here, but he’s wiped his feet and left his attack dogs outside.
In other news, Siobhan just said, “What I’m saying is that if you were just a little more of a self-centered sociopath, you wouldn’t have these issues. Is there a pill for that?”
Maybe. If Scaife’s found an antidote, someone else is poisoning the water supply.
High High Above Me
I’m a focused American with a folder full of current coupons. Did you know the Koch Brothers, evil underwriters of the anti-union Republican Teabagger Revolution, peddle consumer products you can boycott? Here’s a delightful and terrifying list. Let’s have a quick look, shall we?
Wouldn’t now be an excellent time to switch to recycled paper products?
Crossposted at Brilliant@Breakfast.
Poor Impulse Control 