A lighting expert says our mandated switch to CFL will probably save “some” energy, but at too great a cost in rampant dissatisfaction with lighting:
If energy conservation were to be the sole goal of energy policy, and efficacy were to be the sole technical consideration, then why CFLs? If we really want to save energy, we would advocate high-pressure sodium lamps—those large bulbs that produce bright orangish light in many streetlights. Their efficacy is more than double what CFLs can offer. Of course this would not be tolerated by the public. This choice shows that we are willing to advocate bad lighting—but not horrible lighting.
Buyers of the main type of energy-saving bulb, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), are told on the packaging that they shine as brightly as an old-fashioned bulb. For example, an 11W CFL is labelled as being the equivalent of a 60W incandescent bulb.
However, the European Commission, which was responsible for the ban, has now conceded that this is “not true” and that such claims by manufacturers are “exaggerated”.
In a sane world, Congress would back off this insane mandate and leave Americans and their light-bulb preferences alone.
Holy cow. I just used “sane world” and “Congress” in the same sentence. Worst. Monday. Ever.
If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch of legislators.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would vote.
So, you want to tell me that just replacing everybody would mean releasing the competent along with the marginally functional, the experienced with the unteachable, the wise with the foolish, the spendthrifts with the prudent? You’re probably right that chaos would ensue. And that would be different from now, how, exactly?
At Mark Souder’s health care town hall meeting Friday, former City Councilman Dr. John Crawford succinctly identified a major problem with Obamacare and similar proposals:
Government involvement is a huge part of the problem in health care,” Dr. John Crawford, an oncologist and former Fort Wayne city councilman, said. Crawford, strongly opposed to proposed changes in health care, said that costs rose faster as more and more forms of insurance, especially government coverage, accelerated “the separation of the purchaser from the payer.”
Government has been a major factor in exploding health care costs. How can anyone seriously argue that further government involvement will reduce costs? Argue that we need more or better coverage, if you will, or that to deny insurance for people with pre-exiting conditions is immoral, but be honest about the costs involved. If more people are covered, there will be either greater costs or less treatment.
And Fort Wayne attorney David Van Gilder asked a question that gets to the heart of the debate:
Is health care a fundamental right or a privilege?
[. . .]
“I believe access to health care is a basic right,” Souder told him. “Do you have a right to have other people pay for it?” Souder argued that in the spirit of charity, Americans should fund medical care for people who cannot afford it. But that doesn’t mean such charity should become a government institution.
Even access to care is only a basic right in the sense that government shouldn’t be able to deny it. That makes it a negative right in the way long recognized as the foundation of this country, such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Governments are just only as long as they recognize such basic freedoms. The line Souder is attempting to avoid crossing is the one separating such negative rights from positive rights — the right to have something provided by government, whether it’s food, shelter or health care. Finite goods can be guaranteed to all only if they are redistributed among those who have them and those who do not. That means government does the redistribution, which makes something a privilege that can be granted or denied or changed at will. “Rights” must be constant over time.
Wonder if the Good Old Boys will start mingling more with the riffraff now, or maybe they have a secret back room somewhere that you need to know the magic handshake to get in:
After nearly 40 years of service, Fort Wayne’s Summit Club has closed without notice.
The Summit Club was an exclusive private members club for Fort Wayne’s elite business men and women.
An employee told Indiana’s NewsCenter he found out about the closing when he reported for work and was told to go home. He wasn’t the only one shocked by the news.
I was at the club just a handful of times, always as somebody’s guest, often somebody from The News-Sentinel or Fort Wayne Newspapers. That’s the kind of place it was — businesses had a membership or two and took people there they wanted to impress. But I suspect most businesses didn’t use it that often, and memberships were expensive enough that people hated to waste them by not going often enough. So occasionally, lower level-employees would be taken there to give their drab little lives a thrilling interlude.
Every city needs a place like the Summit Club where the elite, near elite and wannabe elite can gather quietly, privately and semi-elegantly and look out over the city (both figuratively and literally in this case), so, economic downturn or not, I suspect there’ll be something to fill the void in short order.
Suppose we have a higher percentage of women living in trailer parks than most states?
A new study by Indiana University researchers suggests that pregnant Indiana women have one of the nation’s highest rates of alcohol, tobacco and drug use.
The study found that Indiana ranks seventh in the nation among women who smoke during pregnancy, and that nearly 18,000 Hoosier babies are born each year to mothers who smoke.
OK, sue me, it’s a cheap shot. I lived in a trailer park once, and some of their reputation is earned. There’s a feeling of transience, even of living on the ragged edge, that you don’t find except in the cheapest apartment complexes.
Third-graders in the Brownsburg school district will be on the fast track to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome:
A letter was distributed to parents this week indicating that more of the instructional time previously dedicated to cursive writing at the third-grade level would be used to teach computer keyboarding skills beginning this year.
“It is clear to us that cursive is becoming more obsolete,” said Donna Petraits, the district’s director of communications. “We are hearing equal amounts of praise and criticism on this decision, which we fully expected.”
This seems to be part of a nationwide trend. Time magazine had an article earlier this month on “Mourning the Death of Handwriting.” I probably shouldn’t be remarking on this since my own cursive is pretty close to an illegible scrawl, even to me after a day or two. But I think spending all that time learning it was valuable in ways that block printing wasn’t. We had to learn how letters actually connected to form words, see where one letter ended and where another began. And I don’t doubt that even printing will begun to be de-emphasized in favor of keyboarding. How many things do we actually write these days anyway? But I wonder about coming generations who will learn what letters look like but not how to make them. Will that be just one more adaption we make, or will something important be missing?
Got an interesting Charles Krauthammer column on “Obamacare Version 1.0,” which he says is dead. I’m not sure if I can find the room for it on the editorial page, so I’ll share it here.
He says Democrats, if they are politically smart enough, can still salvage victory. Obamacare 2.0 would focus on “promising nothing but pleasure” for now. Insurance companies would be forced to cover pre-existing conditions and prohibited from dropping coverage when people get sick. Government would mandate the purchase of health insurance by all who can afford it and subsidize those who are too poor to pay for it, creating two new revenue streams. The end result would be the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage, but without overt nationalization.
Isn’t there a catch? Of course there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later. Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.
However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That’s when the liberals will give the FCCCER regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.
But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.
Until this year, such an outlook would have seemed too cynical even for me. But I think he’s going to end up looking prescient.
My native state has figured out how to solve the problem of atheists — just legislate them away. The law creating Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security declares that the “security of the Commonwealth” cannot be secured without “reliance on Almighty God.”
The language in the 2006 legislation had been inserted by state Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, a pastor of Christ is King Baptist Church in Louisville.
Riner said he planned to ask Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway to seek a reconsideration of the order. Conway has 10 days to do that, and 30 days to appeal.
“They make the argument … that it has to do with a religion,” Riner said, “and promoting a religion. God is not a religion. God is God.”
That’s some impressive thinking, that is, but it didn’t sway Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate, who said the law is akin to establishing a religion. One of its critics called the law “breathtakingly unconstitutional.”
I love magazines. When I was in high school, my parents always had a couple of subscriptions — sometimes Look and the Saturday Evening Post, sometimes Life and Reader’s Digest. Cracking open the newest issue of one and devouring it cover to cover was one of my favorite things. (I usually read all the short things first, then went back for the long ones one at a time until I had read them all, too. That’s still the way I read a magazine today.)
And when I first started here, we had a big, fat budget for things like newspapers and magazines. We subscribed to everything from Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report to National Review and Psychology Today and even the Atlantic and Harper’s. We didn’t use the magazies for research, but fascinating articles we found in them often became fodder for editorials. (That’s also back when we had an actual editorial page staff that had the time to meet regularly to engage in lengthy discussions of fascinating magazine articles.)
I don’t read magazines as much these days. For one thing, they’re awfully expensive. And when I subscribe to one at home, I tend to leave them in stacks unread, vowing to get to them any day. Mostly I pick one up now and then when I’m at Border’s or Barnes & Noble.
But I’ve just found a wonderful site called maggwire that you might like, too. It links to, I think, nearly 700 magazines (and counting). You can sort them by most-linked-to article, by category (news magazines, for example, or entertainment or women’s issues) or by most recently received. Or you can just bookmark your favorite magazines and keep up with each new issue. With a laptop and this site, waiting around some office for your appointment will never be boring again. Click on ”How To Use Maggwire” at the bottom of the page — it’s straightforward and helpful.
I could stay there for hours. The cooking section has about every magazine I’ve ever looked in for recipes — bon appetit and Gourmet and Taste of Home and Woman’s Day and Redbook and . . . Under politics, there is Time and Reason and the Atlantic and Vanity Fair and Newsweek and . . . Well, you get the idea.
OK, everybody start chanting and let’s all go make some signs: Free James Browning! Free James Browning! Free James Browning!
James W. Browning, 66, director of counseling at the University of Southern Indiana, and his wife Sara Ellen Browning, 64, the director of Kindergate day care center at 623 Gum St. in Evansville, remained lodged in the Vanderburgh County Jail on Wednesday night after Indiana State Police discovered marijuana plants with a reported street value of more than $40,000 growing at their Vanderburgh County home Wednesday morning.
I never sought the services of a counselor when I was in college, either because I was too well-adjusted to need one or too scewed-up to know I needed one. But if I had seen one, I would have wanted him to be, you know, man, like nice and mellow. And somebody who could have mellowed me out, too — police said Browning’s marijuana was “packaged for dealing.”
Congress is on recess and President Obama is relaxing on Martha’s Vineyard, so we are at Code Green for economic risks out of Washington. Of course, Nancy Pelosi could tells us that “something must be done” about this or that crisis we never heard about until now, and we’d quickly be at Code Blue. Then will come Code Yellow, Code Orange and the truly frightening Code Red:
severe risk of economic attack. Peter Orszag revises a forecast. He’s only $2 trillion off his initial estimate. No rational human being ever trusts a White House forecast again. Nine trillion dollars in the red (maybe), U.S. national debt will nearly double over the next 10 years—even without health care reform or cap and trade.
President unfazed. Nothing to see here.
Then things look up: “Midterm election lost. Washington mired in debate. Nothing gets done. Hope. And back to Code Green.”
Has anyone else noticed recently that songwriters seem to be losing a certain something lately? It is very difficult to articulate, but let’s say there seem to be fewer writers renewing their poetic license. I have noticed at least three songs in the last few weeks that have the worst use of language featured prominently in their choruses; Godsmack “Whiskey Hangover”, David Cook “Mr. Sensitive”, and The Elms “Back To Indiana”. In fact, the problem I have with each also lies right there in the titles. These songs, these lyrics, these titles all have the worst vowel/consonant and/or syllable flow(s). They completely lack any sense of poetry.
I confess to knowing nothing about these songs, and I’m not even close to being tempted to listen to them in order to verify or disprove the critic’s claim. But I’m willing to concede that lyrics might suck today. Why would songwriters even bother to try for excellence when theye know their efforts are going to compared to immortal classics like “MacArthur Park” and “Muskrat Love” and “I Write the Songs”?
And if you can listen to the part in “A Horse With No Name” that goes “There were plants and birds and rocks and things” without a tear coming to your eye, you just aren’t human. Man, they just don’t write ‘em like that anymore.
I’m not sure about that “syllable flow” thing, but I suspect there’s an ointment or a salve that can cure it.
The northwestern Indiana town of Merrillville is requiring its employees to take five unpaid furlough days this year, along with five more in the first half of 2010.
That amounts to about a 2 percent pay cut each year, which isn’t bad in today’s economy. Indianapolis Star employees have a new two-year contract calling for a 10 percent cut.
At least the city employees will have the benefit of days off to go with the pay cut instead of having to just work the same amount for less pay, the way the Star and many other employers do it. And perhaps Merrillville residents and officials alike will discover that 2 percent less government is not so bad.
The Cash-for-Clunkers program may have set some sort of record for the most federal money thrown away in the shortest amount of time. But, hey, there is good news:
The “Cash for Clunkers” program ended with nearly 700,000 car sales, the Department of Transportation announced Wednesday.
Rebate applications totaling $2.877 billion were submitted by the deadline, which is under the $3 billion allocated for the program, DOT said.
Never mind that they upped the money allocated from $1 billion to $3 billion in less than a month, they were under budget. And what does it say about how we’ve changed in the last six months that we greet a $3 billion derangement as barely worth worrying about? And if that’s funny, this is freakin’ hilarious:
Eight of the top 10 new cars purchased through the program came from Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota, which claimed the top spot with its Corolla. The Corolla, Honda Civic and Ford Focus are manufactured in the United States.
The only vehicles produced by U.S. automakers in the top 10 were the Ford Escape and Focus.
By contrast, all of the top 10 clunkers turned in were made by a Detroit company, with the four-wheel-drive Ford Explorer SUV, Ford F-150 pickup and the four-wheel-drive Jeep Grand Cherokee taking the top three spots.
Yes, Prezident Obama, you can has our health care!
Parents in some Indiana school districts say they are frustrated with changes in school bus routes that districts say are designed to save money.
School officials say the changes, which include fewer bus routes and require more children to walk to school, are needed because many districts are facing steep budget cuts as a result of changes in the state’s property tax system.
[. . .]
Elementary students in Elkhart who live within a mile of their school have to walk or be dropped off under the new policy.
When we were by-God kids, we had it tough, didn’t we, not like the pampered brats today. We had to walk three miles to school and three miles home, and it was uphill both ways! The heat was unbearable every morning, and there was a blizzard every day on the way home. When we got to school, we had to chop wood for the stove, put a new coat of paint on the desks and wash the principal’s car every morning and still be ready for class at 8 a.m. with the 1,000-word essays we had written the night before in between doing 50 math problems and memorizing the Declaration of Independence. We got 5 minutes for lunch, and there was no such thing as recess, and if we were caught whispering, the teacher would make us stand of one leg for an hour, and then we were forced to tell our parents about it, and they bought the teacher dinner as thanks for keeping us on the straight and narrow.
Here are two women I really would not like to have as neighbors:
Two women are lobbying the Lafayette City Council to change an ordinance that bars residents from keeping chickens, saying the fowl should be considered acceptable pets along with their four-legged counterparts.
“It’s a little hobby. They are pets,” said Gay-Ellen Stulp, who has collected more than 200 signatures on a petition supporting the change. “I guess I’m now part of the chicken underground.”
Chicken underground. Ha, ha.
It’s not so much what the women seek that’s bothersome. My neighbors can have chickens or goats and pigs for all I care, as long as they keep them out of my yard. It’s their attitude that sets off alarm bells. Chickens are among the ugliest, messiest, dumbest creatures on the planet, so loathsome that even vegetarians should put them on the menu. They make for fine, fine eating. But pets? Anyone who thinks chickens can be our cute little animal companions on a par with dogs and cats is so seriously deranged that having them next door would be a risk too great to take.
A Marion County sheriff’s deputy working an off-duty security job at a Speedway gas station gets this month’s horny cheapskate award. He was charged with official misconduct after a police sting caught him in the act of patronizing a prostitute:
Brizzi said Wagner was heard on a recording offering to trade a pack of cigarettes and a soda for oral sex.
I know the price of cigarettes has gone through the roof, but, geez. He could have at least thrown in a Moon Pie and a couple of Ding Dongs. And while we’re on the subject of sleazy sex, here’s a very important rule for you: Never, ever rip off your mistress, no matter how desperate you are for money:
The book recounts in great detail the sexual experiences you had with Madoff, and the unflattering comments you made about him physically have drawn quite a bit of attention. Why did you decide to focus on that? In the months following the scandal breaking, I got a lot of questions about what made Bernie tick. [His allegedly poor endowment] was an issue for Bernie. I started doing some research, and it can impact the psyche from a very early age. I really did feel that this was a part of Bernie’s makeup, a big part of his psyche.
Well, sure, I believe that. She didn’t reveal his endowment shortcoming for anything as mean as revenge. She just wants us to understand the psychology of the thing. He became a ruthless liar and cheat because he’s trying to compensate for having a teeny weenie. Now we understand the whole scandal much better.
Roland Maxwell and about 12 other people were let go by their Fort Wayne company. Maxwell doesn’t buy the reasons the company gave him for letting him go, so it must be discrimination. But he’s not taking any chances with claiming just one or two puny charges:
“I think it was my race—it could have been my age, too,” said Maxwell, who is 54.
In a discrimination complaint filed with the City of Fort Wayne Metropolitan Human Relations Commission, Maxwell made those charges and another saying:
[. . .]
“Furthermore all the forklift drivers are supposed to rotate. Randy, Bill and Steve, all Caucasians, don’t have to rotate. I was told they can’t do the job because they are too slow. I believe that because they all go to the same church as Warehouse and Receiving Manager Scott Rottenbeck [who also is] Caucasian, they are protected by him.
So the company let him go because of his race, his age and his religion! There must be something about him they liked.
So, the city is going to buy a building for $7 million and spend another $7 million to fix it up. We don’t know yet if it’s going to do it on its own or in conjunction with the county, and we don’t know what the relationship will be between city and county in the City-County Building. Where are city and county police going to end up, and which government functions will be where?
And that’s perfectly OK with six City Council members. Let’s just name the heroes here — Republicans Mitch Harper and Council President Tom Smith and Democrat John Shoaff — the three who voted no. After Liz Brown made such a valiant effort to call for looking at retiree health benefits in the face of universal opposition, I was hoping she’d be on the “let’s slow down and think this through” side, too, but she defected to the other side.
The council let itself be rushed into this by the mayor’s announcement that property owner George Huber had set an Aug. 31 deadline. That’s nice for him, but George Huber should not be given de facto control over such a big city-government decision. Harper had the right take:
Councilman Mitch Harper, R-4th, called the deadline “artificial haste.”
This is one more indication that party labels mean less at the local level than they do in national politics. Instead of talking about Republicans and Democrats, it’s more useful to consider who on the council is fiscally prudent and who is likely to be a big spender. Smith, Harper and Shoaff seem to be reliably conservative fiscally; Brown is usually in that group, but not this time. Tim Pape, Karen Goldner and Glynn Hines can usually be counted on for more government rather than less. Tom Didier and Marty Bender go in the toss-up category, just because I don’t have a good read on them yet.
What that all means is that fiscal restraint should never be assumed in any given council decision, which is something the phrase “a 5-4 Republican majority” doesn’t convey.
If any of you remember Andrea Muirragui Davis, there is news that is both sad and life-affirming. Andrea grew up in Fort Wayne, then came to The News-Sentinel as a reporter and eventually became assistant metro editor. She then left us for greater job opportunities and is now associate editor of the Indianapolis Business Journal. She recently learned that she has breast cancer:
I’m sure it sounds cliché, but it’s also reality. Cancer has changed my perspective-on everything from modesty (Anyone want to see my boobs? C’mon, everyone else has!) to marriage (Does it really matter who unloads the dishwasher?). And I’m not sure I would go back in time if I could.
Things I took for granted before have never seemed more significant. I’m a word person, and I can’t find ones powerful enough to describe the love and support I’ve been getting from my husband, my parents, my siblings and my dear friends who are like family to me. It’s humbling.
Then there’s my extended network of friends-people I met through work or the neighborhood association or volunteer service-who’ve heard the news and reached out to let me know they’ve been there or know someone who has and that it’s going to be OK. I’m counting on that.
I went to our archives and found the last story Andrea wrote for us, which covered the subject of leaving Fort Wayne, which she grew up wanting to leave, then discovered is “not such a bad place after all.” That’s life for you — always a challenge just when you’re getting too comfortable. Our system won’t let me link to the article, so I’m just going to include the whole thing here. It’s from July 31, 1998. I’ve included a photo of what she looked like about a dozen years ago.
Growing up in Fort Wayne, I had but one ambition - to leave Fort Wayne.
I didn’t know whether I’d be a teacher or writer or garbage collector, but I knew that I wouldn’t be doing it in what I considered a nothing Hoosier city.
As soon as I graduated, I thought, I’d hit the highway and never look back. How things change. Now I’m moving and looking back is all I can seem to do.
When I graduated from college six years ago, I jumped at a job offer here to avoid a lifetime at McDonald’s or living with my parents. But it was just for a year or two, I told myself, then I’d make my break.
Somewhere along the line - while I was getting married, buying a house, building a career and making a life for myself - I forgot to leave.
And I got comfortable. Once a week I took my grandma out to eat. On Thursdays I cheered on my husband’s softball team. Saturdays were bonding with Mom. Sundays I went to family dinners and plotted to duck dish duty.
Life here was more than bearable. I grew to enjoy a peaceful life of family, friends and work. (OK, work seldom has been peaceful, but it always has been satisfying.)
My high school friends already had started carrying through on our youthful threats of desertion by the time I finished my first post-college year. Sara moved to New Jersey; Marty to Texas; Kathy to Iowa.
Then the newspaper friends I made to take their places cruised on to bigger and better lives in Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Minneapolis. One even shipped off to Egypt.
But I still didn’t seriously consider leaving.
Even now, on my last day of work before I feverishly prepare for our mid-August move to Jacksonville, Fla., I’m not sure how or why that changed.
Just a few months ago, I thought I’d never leave. If I eventually needed new professional challenges, I would try teaching or public relations. I would start a family, get free baby-sitting from the new grandma and live happily ever after.
Then something snapped. A newspaper in another city called and asked me to send my resume. I said yes. While I was at it, I applied to a couple of other papers.
Two weeks ago, I had dueling job offers and again had to decide whether I really wanted to leave the only personal and professional life I’ve ever known. It was the most difficult choice I have faced.
But now my lifetime in Fort Wayne is days away from being packed into cardboard boxes.
I’m excited about learning a new job and living just minutes from the beach, but I am also a bit sad about what I’m leaving behind:
* My childhood home and the Father’s- Day-gift pine tree out front, which I still drive by and inspect whenever I’m in the neighborhood.
* The Foster Park golf course and suspension bridge over the St. Marys River, where my then-husband-to-be and I sat and plotted our future.
* The Baskin Robbins, Scott’s Foods and McDonald’s outlets where I cut my professional teeth, and The News-Sentinel, where I sharpened them.
* The Coney Island Weiner Stand and the boys there, who taught me about a lot more than hot dogs.
* Saturday afternoon movie-and-junk-food binges with my best friend.
* The traditional holiday margarita on Christmas Eve at my parents’.
* My first house, unconquered crab grass and all.
And then there are the precious intangibles such as the comfortable silence of spending time with a really good friend and the security of knowing my family is within a stone’s throw (which comes in handy during those occasional feuds).
No, leaving’s not easy. But somehow it just feels right.
So I’ll pack up my memories along with my household and start a new life. I’ll find new favorite restaurants, make new friends and look forward to visits from the Hoosier contingent.
And when the hometown bashing starts, I’ll remember the lesson it took me 28 years to learn: Fort Wayne’s not such a bad place after all.
If you want to wish her well, her e-mail address is adavis@ibj.com
They were just legislators who wanted to do good, so what could possibly go wrong?
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A law taking effect this week could make criminals out of those who bring Tupperware onto many Missouri rivers.
The law was intended to reduce the floating debris from abandoned foam coolers in the state’s waterways. But lawmakers, apparently a little rusty with chemistry, barred the wrong plastic.
You say poTAYto, I say poTAHto. I say polystyrene, you ban polypropylene. We actually vote these people into office.
I haven’t seen any evidence that the GOP is smart enough to take back Congress in 2010 all by itself. But if it has enough help, who knows? Some groups are targeting five House Republicans with attack ads on their reluctance to vote for cap-and-trade. Good. Keep reminding voters who is for and who is against this job-killing piece of garbage that won’t even affect global warming. Democrats seem set to go it alone on health care reform. Even better. Show us which party is really serious about growing government. And, best of all (for the GOP, of course, not the country):
A half-hour after President Obama tapped Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for another term, the White House budget office released new figures today on the federal deficit.
The hard-working Rich Wolf provides this context: For 2009, the deficit is now projected at $1.58 trillion. There will be a $5 trillion increase in red ink over the next five years and a total of $9 trillion over 10 years.
The long-term numbers are worse than previously forecast. Rich says the White House numbers show the deficit declining only $739 billion during the next decade and never falling below 3.7% of the economy.
Republicans lost their way in recent years, straying from conservative principles to embrace big spending and too much government. But they are absolute pikers when it comes to the party that has been perfecting its statist approach for decades. Despite the GOP’s best efforts, voters will be able to see contrasting approaches next year.
Here’s a green idea I can actually get behind — get rid of the green:
The landscaping around Muncie’s city hall is undergoing a big change as crews rip out high-maintenance plants to create something called a “dryscape.”
The city hall’s landscaping is being replaced with thousands of drought-tolerant, native plants and prairie grasses that require relatively little water, fertilizer and pesticides.
I’ve never understood the fascination people have with all the high-maintenance stuff, especially lush, green lawns. You mow the stupid thing and it grows right back and you have to mow it again, which seems sort of pointless and redundant to me. And you’re supposed to use lots of water and fertilizer to actually encourage this nonsense. I think a neighborhood would look lovely with all the yards paved over and painted with nice, vibrant colors like purple and pink.
“We got the kind of call we’d feared. Dad had been in declining health for months. Then he fell asleep at the wheel and was in a bad car accident. Three weeks later he was still in a coma. A breathing machine pumped air into his lungs because he could not breathe on his own. The doctors thought his chances of coming out of the coma were slim. They talked with Mom and me about turning off the breathing machine and allowing Dad to die naturally. I felt terrible. I don’t think Dad would want to be kept alive like this. But I knew Mom would feel guilty for the rest of her life if we told the doctors to ‘pull the plug’ while there was still even the slightest hope. We weren’t sure what we should do because Dad never told us what he wanted. I really wish we’d talked about this before.”
That story strikes a chord with me because our family went through it. In the last weeks of his life, my father was home and suffered one crisis after another, and the kind people of the Visiting Nurses Association helped the family through it all. When it was obvious that the end was no more than hours away, my mom thought maybe we should call in a rescue one last time. But the consensus was that there would be little point. At most, my father could have been “saved” for another day or week of misery. My mother reluctantly agreed, and I know she did feel guilty about it for the rest of her life.
Perhaps at least partly for that reason, my mother made it pretty clear that she did want everything possible done to save her life when the time came. We didn’t exactly sit down and have a big family conversation about it – I suspect that’s a tough one for most families — but she managed to let her feelings be known. We would have been better off if we’d had some guidance in how to approach the subject.
As it happens, there was help available, but we didn’t know about it. The story above is the introduction to “Your Life, Your Choices” (pdf file), a publication of the Veterans Administration that’s beeen getting an unfair rap in the last couple of days. Former Bush Administration official Jim Towey wrote a Wall Street Journal piece about it that led to the document being called the “death book for veterans.”
The booklet, Towey noted, includes a worksheet titled “What makes your life worth living” that presents various scenarios, such as being confined to a wheelchair, relying on a feeding tube or being unable to “shake the blues.”
Towey compared the wording of the worksheet to a political “push poll” meant to steer readers to a predetermined conclusion.
“This hurry-up-and-die message is clear and unconscionable,” wrote Towey, who noted that the Bush administration had suspended use of the document but that it has been “resuscitated” by the Obama White House.
And Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter has jumped in, too, asking the Department of Veterans Affairs to consider suspending use of the document. In doing so, he makes a pretty remarkable (to me, anyway) admission:
Specter said in an interview yesterday that he had not read the booklet but was disturbed by what he had gleaned thus far. “I heard an inference that people might be inappropriately influenced to withhold medical treatment,” he said.
Well, I have read it, and it shouldn’t be a hardship for anybody else to read it, even a busy senator who has lots of people to help him “glean” things. It’s not a thousand-plus pages of government gobbledygook, after all. It’s a mere 54 pages of clear, direct English. I don’t know — maybe some VA bureaucrats have used the document to nudge some veterans into the giving-up mode, but I really don’t see how the document itself can be interpreted as doing that. It plainly states, in several places and in several ways, that people need to decide, while they still can, what they want done for and to them as the end approaches, and let that decision be known now to loved ones so there’s no second-guessing.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still opposed to the government being any more involved than it already is in health care, and anybody who isn’t scared about what the lamebrains in Congress and the administration might come up with just isn’t paying attention. But that’s no reason to scrap something that’s been around for more than a decade and can be of great help to families.
Maybe I’m too generous or not critical enough in my interpretation. Let me know what you think. But at least do what Specter hasn’t and read the damn thing first.
