So I guess maybe you noticed that I haven’t posted anything for awhile. To be honest I have actually seriously thought about discontinuing my blog altogether. I have become so frustrated here lately that I have had to ask myself if this is something that I even want to continue doing.
Let me try to explain.
I see our nation going in directions that are almost abhorrent to me. I watch as our Government spends money (borrowed money) that we don’t have, at increasingly exponential rates without any discussion of how we will ever be able to pay the money back. This debt will be saddled on our kids and grandkids but we are told that there is no other option.
I watch as Congress moves ever closer to a health reform bill that I can see as nothing but tragic for our nation and especially for our young people. What happens to a young person who lives on their own, and is barely making ends meet. They will be forced by our government to buy heath coverage which will be at least $200-300 per month. The young person laughs and says, uhhh I don’t have $20-30 extra at the end of the month! “How in the heck do I buy health insurance.” (Of course we are told that there will be subsidies to help, yeah right!!!) So our kinder and gentler Government says oh that’s ok, since you can’t afford the insurance premium, we will go ahead and charge you an additional penalty of say around $1000. So now our young person owes the government a $1000 penalty, they still don’t have insurance and we all sit back in awe at the wonderful "change" that is coming about in our nation.
Now, since our young person can’t pay for insurance and they certainly can’t pay the penalty, the IRS gets involved as the mechanism to collect from this “deadbeat” young person. They garnishee the miniscule wages that our poor young person makes, they call their employer, check with the neighbors (all standard IRS tactics) abscond with their paltry tax refund, pillage their only remaining $17.76 that they had in their checking account (more realistically knowing most young people, the bank account would be overdrawn anyway so the IRS would strike out there) and otherwise make their life miserable.
Well, since the government has now taken their wages, they can’t pay for anything, they lose their apartment, and their 1986 Chevy Corsica gets reposesed because they can’t make the payments, they still owe the government and they still have no insurance, they end up moving back home with Mom and Dad. (Yeah, like you didn’t see that one coming)
But now they have another problem, this has unfortunately turned into a criminal case (YES, THIS IS IN THE HEALTH CARE BILL) they will now be charged with a misdemeanor punishable by up to 1 year in prison and fined $25,000.
This is the lunacy of the health care reform supported, encouraged, loved, embraced, and drooled over by so many of my “friends” and colleagues.
I have tried, pleaded and even begged for a civil conversation over these issues. I have written about it ad nauseam and tried to help my “friends” look at these issues though a different lens if only for a moment.
I see our nation going in directions that are almost abhorrent to me. I watch as our Government spends money (borrowed money) that we don’t have, at increasingly exponential rates without any discussion of how we will ever be able to pay the money back. This debt will be saddled on our kids and grandkids but we are told that there is no other option.
I watch as Congress moves ever closer to a health reform bill that I can see as nothing but tragic for our nation and especially for our young people. What happens to a young person who lives on their own, and is barely making ends meet. They will be forced by our government to buy heath coverage which will be at least $200-300 per month. The young person laughs and says, uhhh I don’t have $20-30 extra at the end of the month! “How in the heck do I buy health insurance.” (Of course we are told that there will be subsidies to help, yeah right!!!) So our kinder and gentler Government says oh that’s ok, since you can’t afford the insurance premium, we will go ahead and charge you an additional penalty of say around $1000. So now our young person owes the government a $1000 penalty, they still don’t have insurance and we all sit back in awe at the wonderful "change" that is coming about in our nation.
Now, since our young person can’t pay for insurance and they certainly can’t pay the penalty, the IRS gets involved as the mechanism to collect from this “deadbeat” young person. They garnishee the miniscule wages that our poor young person makes, they call their employer, check with the neighbors (all standard IRS tactics) abscond with their paltry tax refund, pillage their only remaining $17.76 that they had in their checking account (more realistically knowing most young people, the bank account would be overdrawn anyway so the IRS would strike out there) and otherwise make their life miserable.
Well, since the government has now taken their wages, they can’t pay for anything, they lose their apartment, and their 1986 Chevy Corsica gets reposesed because they can’t make the payments, they still owe the government and they still have no insurance, they end up moving back home with Mom and Dad. (Yeah, like you didn’t see that one coming)
But now they have another problem, this has unfortunately turned into a criminal case (YES, THIS IS IN THE HEALTH CARE BILL) they will now be charged with a misdemeanor punishable by up to 1 year in prison and fined $25,000.
This is the lunacy of the health care reform supported, encouraged, loved, embraced, and drooled over by so many of my “friends” and colleagues.
I have tried, pleaded and even begged for a civil conversation over these issues. I have written about it ad nauseam and tried to help my “friends” look at these issues though a different lens if only for a moment.
You may ask, what this has to do with writing my blog? Just after my last post, I challenged something one of my friends posted which was bitter and mean spirited. He agreed with me that it was and in writing his response, which I know was his very best attempt to be fair and magnanimous he said that he had always considered the Progressives to be the adult in the debate. So there you go, my progressive friend, doing the best he could to be fair, can’t keep from calling conservatives, children. Even in a message of reconcilliation we can't keep from calling the other side names.
So honestly, I give up! I don’t want to spend all my time arguing, I also don’t want to spend all of my time writing about trivial, personal things, (as much fun as it is to write about Andrew and his drums) I am not smart enough to reflect as theologically as some of my colleagues that I have such great respect for, and whatever I have to say about these issues that are of extreme importance, I am either made to feel that I am somehow being childish or I am belittled for maintaining the set of beliefs and values that I have accumulated over the last half century on this earth. (Which is extremely frustrating when it comes from someone younger than my own children)
So I have a decision to make, do I give up, crawl into the comfortable cocoon of my churches…
(which is exactly what I have been doing)
Or, do I strike out like Don Quixote de la Mancha, tilting at windmills and striking blows in a quest for chivalry and the values that I believe in...
I know, Don Quixote was a little crazy, and I have been accused of that as well. But like Don Quixote, I also have an impossible dream and perhaps it might be just a bit too early for me to give up.
Blessings
No comments:
Post a Comment