Stunned to a degree that it took this long to recover

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I know I said Santorum would be gone after Florida, and at this juncture I wish it had happened.  I was hoping Gingrich would have seen the light of reason and walked away months ago, but he persists, largely, on the donations of a single individual empowered by the, to date, worst politically loaded decision made by the Supreme Court in the last several decades.  I stand here now (after conversations with friends who ask me, “how on earth is this happening?”) and shake my head in disbelief, just as confused and, in some senses, hurt by what I’ve seen.  I go to bat for the Republican party.  I argue that there is a difference between the party philosophy and what is seen on the streets.  I attempt to enlighten, and encourage others to see the party for, not what it is, but what it was intended to be and, most importantly, what it can be.  Then we have state legislatures in South Dakota, Arizona, Virgina, etc. proposing legislation like requiring an additional $200-400 ultrasound that was deemed invasive (later bumped down to a standard ultrasound that, at the early stages of the pregnancy are practically useless).

We rode in on the pony of job creation and economic reform, and we see sweeping efforts on both sides to control the reproductive rights of Americans.  I didn’t vote for the republican candidate because he was pro-life.  I voted for him because he said he would do his damnedest to create new jobs, and work on getting the economy together so that all Americans can see a turn around in the national fiscal policy as well as getting either a few more dollars in my pocket or the opportunity for a new job.  This hideous two-faced nonsense is, unfortunately a long-time running issue with our party, and has spilled over into the public arena in a, some would say spectacular, fashion during our Primaries.

I have argued before that the primary system is broken, giving disproportionate power to the early states and running a process that could be completed in a fiscal quarter into a labored process taking up the better part of a year.

I have stood by and watched as the best chance the Republican Party has to beat President Obama is torn to shreds over and over again because the Primary constituents are either uncomfortable with any human being from the North East of the United States, bigoted fools who won’t look past a minor religious difference, or disgustingly concerned over the notion that Romney does not seem “angry enough” to warrant their support.  The would prefer a Mad Max style candidate, screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs and firing off lovely sound bites like Rush Limbaugh so recently demonstrated.  In short, the majority of primary voters are looking for the solution that will lead our party out of the morass and back into political power, the other voters, and I will agree wholeheartedly that it is their right, choosing the other candidates are all barking mad.

This is what we have to look forward to.  A party paralyzed by itself, and tearing at its own.  We’re measuring our credentials not on who is right, or who has the best plan, but who can go farther to the extreme.  It is some Mountain Dew soaked nightmare that corrupted politics and turned it into an extreme sport where the goal is not success but an attempt to entertain and isolate your support the least number of people and still remain viable.

I would, one day, like to sit down with one of these candidates, most likely after a few drinks, and ask them, on record, what they really think.  I cannot fathom that they believe half the nonsense that comes out of their mouths.  If they do, I will respect their right to believe it, but I will, nonetheless, remain horrified that this is the best we could offer.  This is our time to shine, to win, to take back 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the House, and the Senate and day by day we are bleeding out that opportunity like vampires.  We are losing ground not just at the national level, but locally, and most importantly, on the human level.

We’re burning bridges before they’re even built.  We’ve salted the earth for thousands, if not millions, of young adults who are fed a constant stream of digital information.  They know more than you presume, and they are horrified by what they have seen.  They read the bills if their posted and wonder why an Arizona Legislature found it necessary to created a bill that would require you to submit a doctor’s note to your insurance company indicating that you have an ailment in which birth control could be a boon in treating.  We, as a political party, scream bloody murder at the imposition of a bureaucrat between us and the doctor, but what about our other relationships.  What about our capacity to deal with our employers?  We suddenly need their input there.  We suddenly need an extra hurdle to clear, but dare not call it bureaucracy because the Republicans are doing it.

We’re proving to an entire generation, and possibly more, that we are vicious, closed-minded, angry humans who sole drive is to free the markets but control the people.  That we are willing to go for the hot button issues because they are not intellectually rigorous, but emotionally loaded.  We’d rather read a propaganda piece on Planned Parenthood than call a session to speak to world recognized economists (see not business or industry leaders) to hammer out a solution for long-term, sustainable economic growth rather than a quickie bandage for the economic equivalent of a sucking chest wound.

They are watching, they are listening.  We have been weighed and measured,  and we have been found wanting.  Without them, those future voters of America, there will be no party.  Without them, the other side wins.  After that thought sinks in then, and maybe then, we will pick up the report on the economic development of urban areas and put down the latest propaganda pamphlet.

We are getting played for fools

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I chose not to watch the Primary in South Carolina yesterday.  Instead it was a beautifully calm day, a bit grey and overcast, but enjoyable.  Later I called my family to with my father and brother a Happy Birthday, then my mother hit me with the bad news.  Newt Gingrich had won the Primary in SC.  Not just won it, crushed the opposition with a 12.6% margin.

A keystone to this crossing-the-Rubicon moment for Gingrich was the one-two knockout soundbite from the Debates on Thursday where he so throughly trounced John King for opening a presidential primary debate with a question about a quick-break attention piece involving one of Newt’s ex-wives.  The response to the question, and the subsequent verbal beat down of not just King but of the mainstream media in general, played into the eager hands of a staunchly partisan audience and it was the applause heard ’round the nation.  the next morning radio stations were rolling the audio as if it were the first shot fired at Fort Sumter, an image the Drudge Report would later play out  at the top of its well-known site.

So, now we have a two-man race again (Santorum can bark all he want, but he will not last past Florida and I bear no ill will to Paul but he is not getting the traction he needs to sustain), and one has to ask if this is what we want.  I have problems with the Primary system in place, and I have stated as much in previous posts.  From the nonsense about the ballots being too tough to get on in Virginia to how ridiculously easy it is to get anyone’s voting card in New Hampshire; the system is rife with either incompetence or inconsistencies, either of which are becoming glaringly detrimental to the good order of trying to figure out who on earth the Republican Party is going to throw into the ring against the current political version of Ivan Drago, President Barack Obama (allusion aside, he is geared with the money, the people and the technology to be the best in the field).

Rocky parallels aside, the Primaries are the issue.  They are no longer bellwethers, they are Fairweather at best.  Gingrich’s rises to stardom came and went a month and change ago on the premise of his debate skills, and he crashed back to earth in an almost Icarian fashion.  Now, the voters of South Carolina have seen fit to give him another pair of wax wings and let him have another go at that flying-too-close-to-the-sun plan that went so damnably well last time.  All the while Other candidates bleed out on the sidelines, their ideas and policies being overrun by a wretchedly, and mind numbingly irritating, need to focus on the tawdry details related to the bedroom rather than the boardroom or the war room.  So, the question becomes, how does one play it.

I mentioned to friends last night that either the event preceding the debate are either an amazing use of metagaming by Gingrich or an even more brilliant application by political operatives of the other side of the house.

here is the Hypothesis: A single candidate is developing to be the standard-bearer for the opposition party with four years of campaigning under his belt, money to spare, and a national organization that might very well match your own; however there is a mercurial, loud, and ultimately vitriolic candidate that had his 15 minutes and is still holding on but does not have the organization, structure, or funds to match your candidate blow for blow.  Choose who you want to run against, I’ll wait…

Now, the mercurial one is known to play the audience in debates.  The opposition has chosen to run the concept of debates into the grounds but any observer with half a brain cell has noted that the body politic of the opposition party is in a state of spastic upheaval on a weekly basis.  In Five months there have been four frontrunners, some changing hands literally within a week.

They are fractured, leery, and hiding the contempt they have for the thin field of candidates as “weighing their options”.  So, how does one get this group do what you want them to do?  Play to their sensibilities.  Media, to the opposition is a vile thing.  Intrusive (it is), invasive (it is), and lacking basic moral compunction and sound grounding in reality (ehhh…).  All of these are detestable, easy to point out, and the denouncing of the almost criminally invasive nature of the fourth pillar make for great air time on any given channel.

So, We have our mark, we have our patsy, and we need a catalyst to get this ball rolling.  Enter the angry ex-wife that can highlight some socially unacceptable behavior of the mercurial candidate in question.  Air an interview that is much ballyhooed shortly before the Debate, and then fire the opening shot of the debate, not about something all four candidates can talk about, but about what was said a few hours ago.  No time to vet, no time to plan a solid ground game response, just the smooth operator in front of a sympathetic audience with a bit of trepidation and a (let’s be totally honest Jon King got set up to take a hit on that one) slick-haired liberal elite media personality, and boom.  It was a softball lob to Barry Bonds with a corked bat.  It is out of the park.  It is a standing ovation for the man who has had his private life of a decade ago put on display (let us not forget who he hunted in his time), and several rounds of booing for the big bad journalist.

The next morning, the airwaves are filled with the audio of the verbal smack down, the televisions hum with the warm glow of a presidential primary candidate striking one home, and all the while the question is left unanswered, the dogma forgotten in the moment of vicious rebuttal, and now our Mercurial candidate has knocked out the stalwart leader.  Anger, again, has taken the front of the stage and the calm discipline of others is forgotten, if not frowned upon.  The challenger you were most concerned with is now falling behind in the polls (granted he did himself no favors when muddling about releasing his tax records), and the mercurial one is shooting upwards again.  Money will pour into his dusty coffers, a little more organization will be made,  a little more headway will be gained.  All in all, it is the walk to the convention, and you want that convention.  A split floor with only half the opposition choosing the person to be their standard-bearer against the incumbant; oh yes, you want that.

It sounds Vaudevillian.  To be frank, it sounds downright ridiculous, but stop for one moment, look back, and tell me you can’t see it going down that way.  Why lose a rook when you can convince the other sides knight to take out a bishop?

Sanity reigns in the Old Dominion but it isn’t stopping the show

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On Friday a highly anticipated decision regarding the appearance of Primary candidates who couldn’t muster enough support to be placed on the Virginia ballot came down, and it was an absolute delight.   The Hon. John A Gibney Jr. echoed what many had said over the weeks leading up to this (copy of the decision provided care of Politico): “In essence, they played the game, lost and then complained that the rules were unfair.”

I saw former Speaker of the House New Gingrich as being the sole individual who might even have a modicum of a chance in the challenge, with the disparate rules regarding those who get over 10,000 signatures and those who get over 15,000 signatures.  So, when he didn’t file the suit, and it was Rick “I barely pulled off half of what was required” Perry, it was doomed to fail.  When Santorum and Huntsman jumped on board, it was an obvious grab, like those who aren’t directly affected by a particular event, but jump onto a civil lawsuit pocket some ill-gotten reward, the theatre of the situation only worsened. The most galling of notes, aside from the Huntsman/Santorm scam attempt, was that Gingrich did not file  notice of intent to run for office in Virginia until 22 December 2011.  For those unaware, signature collection began on 1 July 2011.

The argument that if the candidates had access to the horde of out-of-state petition gatherers (of the paid variety I imagine) that they would have easily trumped the 10,000 signature requirement is dubious at best.  Judge Gibney pointed out in his decision that there are over five million registered voters in Virginia, and close to two million participated in the last statewide election.  Cut down the middle that means that there were one million active voters that should have been available to had their doors knocked and said yes or no.  If all candidates had hit those doors, and assuming a one in ten chance of success, that still leaves roughly 100,000 voter signatures, more than enough for all of the candidates combined, and room for a few more.  Another point of disclosure, a registered voter can sign for more than one candidate.

I will give a local example to ply exactly how poorly these men failed: Ben Loyola, a local businessman, ran for State Senate last year.  During his campaign he is said to have knocked on over 50,000 doors personally.  After the campaign events were done for the night, barring it wasn’t too late, he along with his campaign manager and body man would head out to a section of the district he was running for and started on a block, and away he would go.  Sometimes only 20 houses in a night, sometimes north of 100.  Either way, he was on the ground personally.  Come election day Mr. Loyola, sadly, did not win, but pulled in over 10,000 votes.  Those in the game have said the door to actual vote ration is somewhere in the 10:1 range.  If a local businessman can walk from the Hampton Roads area to the border of Maryland looking for support on what would be even less than a shoe-string budget compared to a national campaign, then all of these individuals running for President could have gotten the word out, or, at the least, made a damn appearance in the state.  A Gingrich event at a park, cordinated with one of the Tea Party organizations would have brought hundred, mayhaps a few thousand.

What happened in earnest, is that the candidate didn’t put their foot forward, and in the case of Santorum and Huntsman, they flatly didn’t give a damn (Santorum did gather signatures, but since he never filed a notice to run in the state of Virginia, the signatures were turned away).  Those in Virginia now roaring to the Heavens about the intolerable nature of it all, and the vile laws that govern the way it goes have forgotten that their signature and their options on the ballot are driven not only by their keen interest in a candidate, but in the candidate’s campaign to do the bare minimum.  Santorum is a perfect example with the  thousands spent in Virginia to gather the roughly 8,000 signatures, then to have them turned away because he didn’t fill out the needed paperwork.  He, himself, and his campaign managers, national and Virginia, are bearers of  blame there.

Virginia is not some evil society of string-pulling puppeteers winnowing the field of choices down to the guy they kinda-don’t-like and the one that is getting run over because he sounds crazy saying in public what we’ve been chatting about over kitchen tables for the last twenty years.  The law is in place, followed for decades, and performed as intended.  Should someone fail to follow the letter of the law, there is a punishment that goes along with that.  Those who cannot even follow that simple dictum have no place running for the highest office in the land.  If they can’t figure out one state’s requirements for a simple primary petition, how can we have any faith that they will be able to grasp the issue then  provide educated insight and leadership on topics far, far more complex?

What price victory

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So, coming off a monumental failure to comply to even the most basic of campaign requirements the Perry campaign filed a lawsuit to stop Virginia from printing a ballot without his name on it.  One would find this an abyssal low for a candidate who has kicked his “State’s rights” credo up and down the street more times than there were hideous debate performances, but there are some in this entire show who are even more disgusting.

On Friday it was indicated that four other Candidates: New Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, Rick Santorum, and John Huntsman, have tossed their hats in with the Perry lawsuit in an attempt to get their names on the ballot.  Gingrich, as it has become known, submitted signatures, however a lone individual was apparently responsible for 1500 bad signatures.  While I doubt the veracity of this lone corrupt signature gatherer, issues like this arise when there is a mad dash for signatures in the final hour and financial incentives are offered for signatures.   The other three….well, they didn’t even bother to submit petitions in Virginia.

Three ‘candidates’ who were ‘serious’ about running for President of the United States did not even attempt to file to be on the primary ballot in Virginia.  this isn’t sad, this isn’t an oversight, this is pathetic and possibly the most miserable excuse of riding the coattails of someone else I have ever seen.  Three sniveling wretches who didn’t even have the time or decency to come to Virginia and petition the voters who are supposed to chose them as the candidate to beat the President want to jump on the bandwagon with Rick Perry and be hoisted up as a candidate that spent the time and effort in Virginia to meet the requirements.  They are a picture perfect example of what the Republican Party is trying to remove in this country, a notion that because they participated, because they happen to be competing for the same thing that they should be entitled to the same benefits that those who put in the time and effort to gather the needed signatures.

Forget laws that have been in place for over a decade, forget that dozens of other candidates who have run for statewide elections have fulfilled this requirement, and go ahead and ignore the fact that Perry only turned in around 6,000 instead of something closer to the required 10,000 signatures.  No, forget the requirements and rule of law.  Now the campaigns of those who were found wanting are filling a lawsuit because they had to follow the rules.

There are several dozen insults I could fling at them but to be frank, they’re not worth the time.  If the campaigns of Bachman, Huntsman, and Santorum cannot even bother an attempt at coming to Virginia and seeking out the support of the republican base then they have no legal basis to be added to the lawsuit.  No harm has fallen to them since there was no effort expended.  For the Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to stand up for these political failures is a disturbing note.

The AG is responsible for ensuring that the laws of Virginia are enforced.  Kowtowing to candidates, some who didn’t even bother to file in his state, by submitting emergency legislation to the general assembly is not only a poor decision, it is indicative of the AG, who will be running for Governor in the upcoming election, is already playing politics for the individuals at the national level who he believes can do more for him than the constituents of hist state.  He’s selling out his state’s sovereignty and failing in his duties so that he can put himself in some imperceptibly better position to fail Virginia further.

the laws of the state are just that, the law.  If the Republican party is going to claim they are the party of laws and personal responsibility then we need to elect individuals who are willing to stand up and recognize those laws.  Trying to circumvent those laws, which dozens of other individuals running for office have been able to meet to move on to public office, is indicative of an individual who is not willing to live to the standard needed, and indicative of an individual who, under no circumstances whatsoever, should be given the unwarranted opportunity to be on the ballot in Virginia’s Primary.

Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…

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We’ve now seen the full Circus.  The major players have performed their acts.  The clowns are in their car puttering off the floor, the rings are thoroughly beaten down with the prints of every elephant contending for the spotlight, and the audience is just as confused and disoriented than they were upon entering the tent.  Tragic, is it not, how easily the pageantry and absurdity of the circus reflects the ebb and tide of the pre-primary seasons for the Republican party.

What we saw was a rise of individual stars who would burn out as quickly as they blazed into the spotlight leaving behind only hollow bodies in the vast expanse of the political space.  Like those burned out stars, they leave husks that either disappear with time, or continue to flicker on, acting more as an irritant or pouring out continuous drivel and noxious commentary that provides nothing more to the current political discourse than a nauseating reminder that at one point a significant number of people believed them capable of winning an election for President.

No, this thirteen ring circus has done nothing for our party, and it surely has done no good for the political process.  A fellow follower of politics stated that he believed this was a maturing of the party’s political savvy.  A method by which the body politic separated the wheat from the chaff and would winnow our candidates down to those most deserving.  I wanted to agree with him, but I had the feeling that this was too “celebrity” with the likes of Palin and Trump toting about the ever ambiguous hash of a campaign not yet announced.

I, along with a goodly number of people, look back and realize that it wasn’t about winnowing the wheat from the chaff.  The process was not about locating the best candidate, nor was it about finding the best Republican to run.  There was an ebb and flow to the entire affair.  Someone came in, shined brighter because the harsh spotlight was on someone else, and they, by lack of close scrutiny, became the best candidate for the job by proxy.  The light would shift, the audience would become enthralled with the new champion of the right, and so the cycle began anew.  It was faddish in the most derogatory form of the word.  The herd ran where the press led with signs highlighting word choice and bold, but ultimately mindless, plans.  Catchphrases replaced worldly experience, education on policy trumped by showmanship, and knee-jerk responses became the headlines rather than the cultured response of, not those who happened to read the paper from the day before, but from those who had done this sort of thing before.

The most sickening part of the show comes from two sad players in the run of any show.  There is a director, an individual who through instruction and cultivation of his actors has created the spectacle before you.  In this sad and sallow case we happen to have two on hand.  The litany of Tea Parties and the surprisingly quiet Republican National Committee.

The Tea Party has rushed to the center of the ring as a barker possessed of a need to upstage the existing ringmaster.  It has become a monumentally disastrous initiative that has done little more than chisel away at a what little firmament there was in the base of the party.  All the while the RNC, the chosen ringmaster of this show for nigh on decades now sits somberly by, not wishing to interfere or to interject itself into state level politics, having been burned or spurned by those groups in the last round of elections.  The rally cry and subsequent victories of the tea party in the public eye shocked the RNC into a sort of fugue state that now threatens to undermine the organization as a whole.

We have one ringmaster who has a faint idea of what they are doing and another who appears to be asleep at the wheel, and one wonders why the field has yet to be winnowed down.  I understand that are arguments to the effect that the voters must decide who is the most viable candidate, and to those arguments I will concur wholeheartedly, but that only applies if the voters are willing to decide.  The day of the primaries is not the time to hop into a booth and play enie-menie-minie-mo with the candidate pictures on the touch screen.  If they have been weighed and measured then the truest test comes when asking if they are found wanting.  Only when the audience decides to boo one of the shows off the stage will the ringmasters even begin to pay attention.  Then, and maybe then we will see some serious discussions.  The time for debate is, sadly, over, and now we are to march out of the tent and to the polls to decide which elephant danced the best in the center ring.  To wait for one of the performers to be shamed off stage out of their own self-interest rather than because the audience finds them unfit is a horrifying indications of how desperate the voter base is to hang on to an idol no matter how temporary.

Should we ever reach the conclusion that none of the candidates could put on a noteworthy performance and were being held up by gross expectations of the biggest player in this entire farce we are well and truly lost because “a good try” will guarantee a failure in 2012.

Take a moment, breathe it in, and then do your damnest to destroy any value it may have

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A week has passed since the bogeyman of the anti-terrorism war, shot down like the villain he was, and what was a success, a combined effort of civilian and military intelligence and special forces operations efforts, is now lying on the road, muddied and roughed up like yesterday’s front page of the times in NYC.  The narrative has gone from a dashing tale of the finest sailors and marines the US can muster flying into hostile territory with a “pretty good” chance of finding what they’re looking for, touching down, losing a helicopter to reasons now unexplained, and then marching on the bad guy in his base.  It reeks of Hollywood bravado, and, as ashamed as I am to admit this, I enjoy every second of that tale.  It’s our narrative, the one our nation has crafted from the beginning.  The halls of military buildings are replete with plaques of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines that went above and beyond the call of duty and performed tasks that most of us can’t even imagine performing.  This is the legacy of our armed forces, the litanies and hymns of those that march off to defend the land of the free, and nothing, I repeat, nothing can foul that legacy faster than putting a mangy lot of self-serving politicians in charge of it.

The narrative went from a firefight to a guy getting shot in his PJs.  Our special forces with years of rigorous training and highly honed physical and mental capabilities painted with the brush of savages and brutes that gunned down an unarmed men instead of one of the most vicious, violent, and vindictive individuals in the world.  We, in a matter of hours, became the villains rather than the victors.  Our cheers of victory over our demon from afar washed out by the world chiming in that it was comparable to the Muslim response to 9/11.  I wish to digress a moment and point out that if those who say the unwarranted murder of 3,000 people is equitable to killing the director of said mission, then I would highly recommend evaluating not only their moral compass, but their math skills.

Truth is good, don’t get me wrong, but there is a narrative here.  Read a military officer’s foreword or listen to speech from a military leader.  Short, straight to the point, and, if they’re old enough or high enough in rank, filled with enough steely determination to build a small battleship out of.  That is why the failed handling of this momentous even is so tragic.  Here is an unquestionable victory in the war on terror.  A mastermind, nay, THE mastermind rotting at the bottom of the ocean.  We raided a house filled with intelligence that can lead us further down the rabbit hole than we’ve ever been, and our elected body is waffling on the details?  Rather than get this right as soon as they were out of the locks, they chose to come out half-assed, intelligence not completed, and put a PC cherry on top, which they manged to screw up, and left the world feeling like we dropped our gun and the bullet just happened to hit the right guy in the room.

If the best the military has can operate with precision, efficiency, and willpower that  will not yield to extraneous nonsense, then should we not expect the same from the ‘best’ the political world has to offer.  The moment the White House got their hands on the information, it became PR.  It was a victory; it was a photo opportunity.  I doubt most of the leadership can even admit to even concede to the notion that they haven’t the foggiest idea what comes next, let alone what happened in that moment.  To them, it was “Bin Laden”, “Dead”, and “poll numbers”.  Never was it about victory, resolution, or progressing the mission; only how they could glean something off of it for themselves.  If there is any tragedy to be pulled from this event it is not what happened in Pakistan, but how utter a failure the response was in Washington D.C.

It is something we have been saying all along, and, apparently, so has the President

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The decision handed down yesterday in Florida upped the ante in the high-stakes poker game of national healthcare legislation.  For those curious, or those who haven’t read the news since Saturday, you can find the Reuters story here.  My moment of impish glee came when I saw that the Presiding Judge nailed the mandate to the ground and drove a stake through its heart (something, you should note, you won’t find in the Reuters story).  He then went on to validate his approach by quoting  possibly the most damning of experts on the matter, the President himself, if ever so briefly.

Speaking in 2008, the President said, on the subject of healthcare mandates, “if a mandate was the solution, we can try to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a home”.  Short, yes.  Simple, yes.  Erred in quoting…eh, not even close.  Back in the hay days of 2008, when the wet behind the ears Senator from Illinois was aiming to take on the, then, most powerful family of Democrats at the time (i.e. the Clintons) a major separation point between the to-be President and the to-be Secretary of State was that Clinton’s healthcare proposal included the now infamous mandate.  The lack of a mandate in one of the heaviest points of contention would open Obama to the moderates, along with several other middle-of-the-road stances, and eventually win him both the Democratic ticket and the Presidency.

So, now, here we sit, nearly a year has gone by, as of Saturday 722 waivers have been handed out to companies and it appears that the SEIU is getting more than their fair share when compared against the rest of the businesses out there.  The Medicare program’s head actuary is saying that the ‘savings’ from the healthcare bill are unsustainable and may, in the long run, cost taxpayers upwards of $311 billion over the next eight years.

Mind you, this is still a battle over health care.  Democrats are still firing on all cylinders saying we will be able to take care of everyone while the 535 members of congress can’t balance a budget, Republicans lay down useless legislation that will never pass, but is a token gesture to their ‘hardcore’ constituents so they can come back in 2-6 years and say, while shrugging their shoulders, “we tried”.  We have a congressman who spent 16 years in the House of representatives and the last ten in the Senate but can’t remember that the three branches of the government are the executive, legislative, and judicial rather than just a motley crew of folks getting together to hammer out legislation.  Least we forget, that we are barreling northwards of $14 trillion dollars and borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar spent, and the apparent champion of the cause to battle this titanic financial monstrosity is a congresswoman who has the gall to call herself tea party, but tags a big “R” next to her name come campaign season and around big donors.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are only a few of the “issues” we have to deal with, and, tragically, all those propogating those “issues” are running the show.

Back from mission impossible

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With the elections ending on the second, a delightful show involving the comedian Daniel Tosh on the fourth, and several papers rushing up upon me, I have returned to the blog that I started some time back.  To whom it may concern, the absence was not in vain, and, in truth, I should have kept efforts to update while working on a campaign for the last seven  months, but due to agreements, contracts, and the peering eye of the opposition I chose not to.

That’s right, I worked a campaign.

Not one of those “I volunteered, knocked on doors, made phone calls, and went to rallies” volunteering, no.  Paid work as an assistant policy director and a very, very brief stint as the assistant campaign manager.  There are several things I have learned my first dance in the arena, and I would love to share them here with those who happen to stop by:

1) If you’re going to get paid, get paid a livable wage.  The amount I ended up getting paid wouldn’t cover the bills, gas, food, and miscellaneous expenses.  If I didn’t have the Montgomery G.I. Bill on the side, I would have collapsed under the weight of credit card debt long ago.  Even with the G.I. Bill, I’m looking up at broke, but it was a job.

2) Long hours are part of the job.  From morning policy meetings, to a daily schedule ten hours deep in events, and a closing brief at the end of the day plus any research or writing you may need to do afterwords, it is a long running job.  Many nights I was up until two to three am working on policy papers, researching topics that would be of interest and digging up news bits and facts that would be used to pepper speeches and give the candidate an air of being on top of things.  The candidate also requested a ‘intelligence brief’ similar to what the President of the United States gets every morning, so I scavenged through the news sites and major government agencies looking for tidbits.  I composed an e-mail that went out to the body of the campaign, and let them know what I thought would be the most pressing things in the minds of the voters for that day.  To be honest, this was the best part of the job for me.  I’m an information junkie, so asking me to research and formulate responses and policy positions based on the ever shifting sands of the political world was a challenge I met with a certain level of joy.

3) Know your candidate.  The short version of how I got into the position I did is that the candidate I ended up working for was not the guy I started out supporting.  I hopped on board because my first candidate was supporting the newcomer and my work with him had impressed him enough to invite me to join the new campaign.  A lot of people put faith in the candidate and after six months of campaigning the results were disastrous.  There were positions that the candidate held that I did not agree with him on but could live with (the whole ‘each has their own opinion and no one is going to agree 100% of the time).  What I could not tolerate was that a large amount of what was being given to the candidate by the policy director, campaign manager, and myself was tossed aside with every speech.  Time and time again we heard fluff and inspiration when the constituents were asking for facts and answers as to how the candidate was going to address the issue, how we as Republicans were going to solve the current ills of society, and drive the economy to recovery.  We had mulled this over for days, put up what we believed was a convincing and through plan to our candidate, and even if it was wrong, at least it was something.  At least it was an idea.  The candidate never, not once, mentioned it in his speeches.  Instead it was more fluff and empty ‘inspiration’.  After talking to a few people who had known him in another district I found out he was an empty shirt who exited their congressional contest well in advance.  His track record was littered with faux pas and failures.  I was working with damaged goods, and those are salvageable if the candidate is willing to listen.

I have more to say about the ups and downs, but it gets personal, and I do not want that out in the air.  The campaign failed not because of the effort, but because the candidate refused to see the writing on the wall.  Some final actions by the last of the campaign directors effectively ostracized the political party whose banner we were running under by implying that the lack of financial support equated to racism from a state, if not national, political organization.  I tendered my resignation shortly thereafter.  I would not work for an organization that was going to play that at the end.  I had not worked for months to try to build a legitimate campaign, to create an engine for intelligent and informed dialogue on topics rather than scary commercials, and then to watch it go down in flames because the end was in sight, they knew they had lost and the candidate and campaign manager chose to try to throw someone else under the bus for their failures rather than man up and take the required beating that comes from a poorly run campaign.  I was not privy to the decision-making processes in the last month.  My association with one of the prior campaign managers put a black mark on me and while they still asked for information and assistance, I had been locked away from conversations for fear that I would leak them back to her or the republican party.  That was an honest fear of theirs.  That the party they were running under would get wind of what they were doing or saying.

It was not a good campaign.  It was not a healthy time for me, but it was a learning experience.  I’ve made connections, and now experienced the electorial process from both ends of the spectrum, as observer to direct participant in the campaign system.  I am now working with elements of the Republican party and look forward to expanding my level of knowledge, and taking another shot at working for a candidate in a congressional race.  I know there were somethings I did wrong, and I will man up to those, but after all the mess I am still here and looking forward to the new cycle of elections to come.  This time, I might even write about it.

J.P.

A quiet moment for reflection, and the battles to come

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I stayed up late to catch the vote on HR 3590.  The vote itself was possibly the most agonizing fifteen minutes of political television I’ve watched in a great while, but what irked me more than anything was the shenanigans and nonsense that preceded it.

Two hours of back patting and prattling about like fools putting on a performance.  Votes were secured months ago, or at the latest 24 hours ago.  There was no need for the chatter, the ramblings on fist thumping speeches.  All the blowhards on either side of the aisle can claim victory.  Yes, even in defeat the Republicans can claim victory.  This is big government.  Big brother now telling you what you must do.  This is the first step, they’ll say, in the great war on freedom.  Glenn Beck will froth at the mouth.  More Crossed hammers and scythes will adorn the pedestal of verbal villainy as he takes to the stage to rage on about the imposition of Tyranny upon our fair Democracy.  In part, he’s right.

Seventeen months, not including the 2008 campaigns, we have waged a verbal war over this topic, and without end have we met with contention, anger, and in some cases, slammed doors.  The five vote victory last night proves only that votes can be bought, that, in the end, despite poll numbers, public outcry, and CBO estimates that don’t add up, there is a pressing need to impose upon a nation the requirement to purchase a commodity.

There is a word you won’t find in the Constitution.  A commodity.  An exchange of dollars for a service, a cover for sky-high costs based on the pre-existing notion that their very creation encourages such inflation.  Without insurance, without the financial guarantee of coverage at $100, who would charge those that cannot afford $100.  The value of a service is based almost entirely on what others are willing to pay for it.  If there is a service that ‘covers the difference’, prices can soar because the users see $10, but the collective is paying the other $90.  Hence the deluge to come.  Basic math and rudimentary economics would indicate that there is a pool of money upon which individuals companies are willing to give up for said procedures.  We as a nation, in accordance with our elected representatives, have now said that we are not concerned with the financial well being of an industry that speculates on the health and well being of individuals.  Is it wrong?  No more than gambling in Las Vegas, playing the odds that an x number of patients will never get ill, hence paying for the y number of patients that do, or at least cover that last $90.

We’ve infringed upon the concept of choice, the validity of free will and the capacity to make a bad decision have been taken away from us.  Individuals should be able to afford healthcare without insurance.  That should have been the goal all along.  Rather, it has become a waddling monstrosity, bloated on the incessant need for insurance to pay exorbitant rates for basic visits.  A trip to the optometrist for a check up on the peepers?  Something to the tune of $400.  How is it I have managed to take up $400 of the nurse’s time?  I didn’t even see a optometrist until the last 20 minutes when they had me look at a chart through a device that can give them a baseline for my prescription.  A quick look online and it turns out that a full setup in an office goes for around 10K (on the low end).  Figure in salaries for the nurse and doctor who spent 20 minutes on me, and I am paying a hideous amount of money to be told that my prescription hasn’t changed all that much from last year, and that my glasses will be satisfactory for another year.  My contacts, those are good too.  Insurance will cover about $300 of it, but it makes me wonder.  Is it really $400 worth of service, or is $400 what they can get away with?  Is that the baseline cost set by insurance coverage, a sort of ‘this is the most we can charge without problems’.

The passage of the healthcare bill is music to the  constituents ears.  Those desperately pining and begging to see this president produce a single product of campaign promise has been long in waiting, so elation is expected.  To early 2o’s bloc of voters, it shores up a demographic that is quickly growing tired of the lack of action.  There was doubt and now a renewed vigor.  A sense that a right had been made, that a wrong has been corrected, and that the ledgers will balance out in the end long, long after this president has passed the mantel unto the poor schmuck who is going to deal with an over priced, over loaded system about to buckle under its own considerable weight.  Foresight of future difficulties has been sacrificed on the altar of short-term gains.  The Democrats have their 9th hour victory.  There was time to spare, still a chance for negotiation and true reform.   Instead, we were handed a party hammering through policy even when a tenth of their party did not agree with them.  The words ‘epic’ and ‘historic’ were tossed about often regarding this bill.  I fear they failed to see the remainder of those sentences, and we shall all pay, literally, the consequences for a shallow victory.