Glad to see it.

Bouncing around the web lately I’m getting the feeling that there’s a significant portion of those loyal to the Democratic Party that think there’s some violence ready to erupt in this country. I gather that they look at the TEA Party gathering as some formidable force or something.

What you really need to watch out for is a 3rd party (Libertarian would be my guess) getting serious votes in a national election. That would indicate people are actually unhappy with how the country is being run. But that’s not going to happen any time soon either. The people you think are ready to start pulling triggers aren’t even willing to pull a different lever in an election booth in total secrecy. At least not in any significant numbers.

So, chill.

This post somewhat inspired by Roberta X’s post on why she didn’t vote in the Republican primary. If a small government minded person gets hounded for not voting in the Republican primary we’re a LONG way from any sort of revolution at the ballot box; let alone the cartridge box.

I don’t like it and I don’t think it’ll stand up to any sort of legal challenge.

That said, I understand that residents of Arizona are rather annoyed with illegal immigrants coming over and committing crimes and want the Federal government to get involved. I get that, but I think they went about it in the wrong way.

So, here’s my plan for Arizona.

You want the Feds to start helping? Take every illegal alien convicted of a crime that would warrant jail time, present and future, and put them on buses headed for DC. Drop them off at the steps to the Capital and set them free. Maybe sprinkle a few around the apartments inhabited by our Congress Critters while they stay in DC during the week. Maybe send them weekly updates on the types of folks they just dropped off on the door steps too. “Juan Murderer: Convicted in 2008 and released in 2010 outside where you work. We gave him back the murder weapon because it was just taking up space in our evidence room. Can’t convict him again anyway so we didn’t need it. Sleep tight!”

That’ll get their attention!

I’m half joking there but I’m half serious too. We need to be able to keep dangerous criminals out of this country and with that we need to be sure that if we deport a dangerous criminal they don’t just wander on back in.

Now, when you say something like that folks look at you and think “ZOMG! You’re racist and think Mexicans are going to kill us and rape our wives!” No, that’s not the case. I grew up in Ottawa County, Michigan, USA. We’re big on agriculture out here, an industry I spent a significant number of years in, and I can guarantee you I’ve worked with a whole pile of illegals in my life. I like them. I really do. They aren’t any different from the rest of us, aside from the few criminals, and we have a good share of them in our native population as well.

In my perfect world we’d have borders that looked like the checkout lanes of your average supermarket. People would pile up and somebody would run the equivalent of a NICS check on them. If approved they come on over.

Well, I did a little reading up on the major bullet points in the bill that the House passed the other day. It’s a little hard for me to get worked up about it because I don’t see it having a negative impact on me, might even be some positive stuff in there. Oh, and nothing that’ll affect my employer either, at least not that I can see.

I do question the sanity of taxing insurance policies, medical equipment, and pharma companies to help fund the thing, though. We’re going to drive down the cost of health care by taxing health care? Stellar plan, guys.

The last one in particular boggles the mind. The same government that grants pharma companies a complete lock on a new drug for 17 years (I think) is going to make them pay fees and they really think they’re just going to absorb that cost? Psh. If you’re on Lipitor, and many other drugs, you can’t just go to their competition if they try and pass the costs down to you. You’re stuck. It’s either that or Cheerios. It wins the Democrats points for standing up to “big pharma” though. Good plan, shove a needle into the eyes of the companies coming out with drugs that keep us living longer.

You can find an immediate impact analysis over at The Liberty Papers by Brad. I was nodding my head the entire time I read it. His take seems about right to me.

I’m sure it’s too late for my opinion to matter on the topic but I’ll lay it out here anyway.

1) I think the Democrats have gone about this all crabbed. Health insurance reform should be approached from a consumer protection angle, not an “everybody has a right” angle. If you want to sell a product called “health insurance” then you need to meet certain federal guidelines on what you do and do not cover. Health insurance coverage shouldn’t be any harder to understand than when you motor up to a gas pump and decide what octane rating you want the gasoline in your car to be.

2) Not having a “public option” is bullshit. I can’t believe the package we’re getting doesn’t include one. When you’re running a small business with 5-20 employees it’s a bitch to track down a policy that’ll actually cover you at a reasonable cost. We really should let the feds gobble up a giant pool of policies that meet their criteria (see point 1) and then resell them at cost to small business owners. Insurance companies get a giant customer pool with a single payer out of it and small businesses would have a nice “default” to go to if they don’t want to invest man hours in shopping around for something better.

3) Go ahead and regulate the profit margins while you’re at it. Health insurance is nothing more than pushing money from party A to party B and taking a bit of profit for your trouble along the way. It’s not much different than lending really and we’ve all accepted that the government can regulate interest rates to some extent. Let the government set the actuary tables on the health policies and hold the insurance companies to that. You want more profit or market share? Do it through better customer service and gathering more customers. Seems to work for the Swiss.

4) Just get rid of Medicaid and drop those people into the public option plan. Either pay for it out of the general fund or weight the premiums paid by those on the public option so that they’re covering folks that cannot afford it.

What’s wrong with that?

My sister-in-law is staying with us for a few days on vacation with her two toddlers, ages 3 and 1.5 years old. I love it when they come out to visit. The husband couldn’t make it because he’s in Afghanistan working on building a power plant.

So, this evening the 3 year old is acting like a 3 year old is expected to. Screaming and crying about everything that doesn’t quite suit him perfectly.

Wife: “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
Me: “Honey, I just got done watching Republican Senators in the Sotomayer conference hearings on C-SPAN. This is nothing!”

This is where I’m keeping updated. Tatsuma is a commenter on Fark.com and follows Middle East news pretty closely. I’m using him as my filter instead of trying to follow everything on Twitter and figure out what’s true and what isn’t.