mellowtigger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mellowtigger) wrote2010-02-17 11:31 am
mellowtigger) wrote2010-02-17 11:31 am
race to diagnosis
I believe that the world (the whole universe, actually) lacks all the resources that are desired. Meaning... every desire cannot be fulfilled. Some want has to go unfulfilled.
Minnesota is facing severe budget shortfalls. Our ideologue governor, however, promises not to sign for a single tax increase. Instead, he's in the habit of pushing costs downward to more local governments which then have to raise their taxes to compensate. The ideologue wins on a technicality. *disgruntled sigh*
He's now announced his most recent budget proposal. There are lots of cutbacks. Frankly, all of them seem disturbing. A followup article focuses specifically on the health care cuts.
That last sentence? That would be me.
The sad thing is that even all the harsh cutbacks still depend on receiving future federal money. They still depend on pushing true costs out into future state budgets. Both obvious signs of accounting hack jobs. (But don't you dare raise taxes, no, because that would destroy the republic.)
I go in next week for my EMG tests. I go see the neurologist two weeks after that.
It's a race to see if I can leech taxpayer money for my medical diagnosis before the money disappears.
Minnesota is facing severe budget shortfalls. Our ideologue governor, however, promises not to sign for a single tax increase. Instead, he's in the habit of pushing costs downward to more local governments which then have to raise their taxes to compensate. The ideologue wins on a technicality. *disgruntled sigh*
He's now announced his most recent budget proposal. There are lots of cutbacks. Frankly, all of them seem disturbing. A followup article focuses specifically on the health care cuts.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty's proposal to cut a net of $347 million from programs for sick, aged, disabled and jobless people is akin to the advice an ailing George Washington got from his doctors 210 years ago, one critic said Monday: Bleed him, in hope of a cure.
Pawlenty would eliminate the General Assistance program in which about 20,000 disabled and very-low-income people receive an average of $175 a month.
He also would remove about 21,500 childless adults earning between $8,100 and $27,000 from MinnesotaCare, the health insurance program for lower-income working people.
- http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/84422862.html
Pawlenty would eliminate the General Assistance program in which about 20,000 disabled and very-low-income people receive an average of $175 a month.
He also would remove about 21,500 childless adults earning between $8,100 and $27,000 from MinnesotaCare, the health insurance program for lower-income working people.
- http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/84422862.html
That last sentence? That would be me.
The sad thing is that even all the harsh cutbacks still depend on receiving future federal money. They still depend on pushing true costs out into future state budgets. Both obvious signs of accounting hack jobs. (But don't you dare raise taxes, no, because that would destroy the republic.)
I go in next week for my EMG tests. I go see the neurologist two weeks after that.
It's a race to see if I can leech taxpayer money for my medical diagnosis before the money disappears.
no subject
Economics has become an end rather than a means.
Even those who would embrace social reform or more progressive measures look upon their goals as ends to be reached rather than tools, these days. Everyone has fallen prey to those who wanted to structure the argument in terms of finance and money. It's all we ever talk about. And because we only talk about things in terms of their monetary and fiscal outcomes we have allowed our thinking to become shaped in such a way as to put all other concerns secondary to those concerns.
This is not to say we should not be worried about money or economics; anything but! Rather, that we have allowed this beast -Mammon- to become our God and He is choking us by our long, heavy, golden chains of interest, thought, and desire.
I think the only solution is to start a backlash against this thinking in all that we say and do.
Your garden is a great example! The bottom line, there, is what you produce but in terms of so many things: not just the economic. Can it be described that way? Certainly. But that's not what you get out of it.
Perhaps we need to get everyone thinking more about multiple "bottom lines" and that money -economics- is not the only framework by which we should view the world. Our business and political leaders don't have the final say in our lives, certainly not our religous leaders either, so we should craft our community leaders in this image. Maybe, then, we can craft an alternative to this stifling scenario.
What do you think?
Yours,
Dave
no subject
The Onion's pretty topical lately. ;)