“Where Are We Going?
And Why Am I In This Handbasket?”
This is the new bumper
sticker on my car. Some people don’t immediately get it, because
they don’t quickly connect it to the phrase “going to hell in a
handbasket.” But then, there are probably people who don’t get my
other bumper sticker, “How’s that Hopey-Changey thing working for ya?”
Or, they might not understand “Who is John Galt?” that’s been riding
my front bumper since President Obama was re-elected in 2012.
I can’t help it if some
people don’t get my bumper stickers; I can’t educate voters with my
car. I can only express myself and give a shout-out to drivers who
are already “one of us,” the Obama resistance, the tea party or as
Congressman Charlie Rangel, D-New York, calls us, “white crackers,”
an insult that could also be made into a fun bumper sticker.
There’s just so much
room on my car, though. I must keep “Preserve and Protect
Proposition 2˝.” And, with my new sticker reflecting political
despair, it’s even more important to have the “Never Give Up” bumper
statement with the picture of the frog resisting being swallowed by
the stork.
So, in the spirit of
that resistance, I took my Honda CR-V and its stickers to the gas
station to top its tank last Wednesday, just before the state gas
tax increase went into effect. I needed only a few gallons so saved
just 16 cents. I’ll add that to whatever I save this coming weekend
on the sales tax holiday, when I stock up on batteries, detergent,
shampoo and cosmetics for the coming year, then declare that “I
stuck it to the man!” in this case, Deval Patrick, who wanted even
higher taxes.
He did get the gas tax
adjustment to the Consumer Price Index that will happen
automatically each January, so that our legislators will never have
to vote on the subject again. A ballot committee is organizing this
week to repeal that provision it calls “taxation without
representation.”
You could also apply
this phrase to another provision in the new tax package, the
creation of a sales tax on computer services, because all our
legislators who voted for it had no idea what it does and to whom.
We’ll find out as it gets implemented, just as we are slowly
learning what Congress voted for when it passed ObamaCare.
There’s new information
just since my July 17 column, which noted that companies are trying
to avoid paying the employer mandate by not having the “more than
50” full-time employees that trigger this mandate. Some of them are
hiring only part-timers: But now, the healthcare bureaucrats are
working on a formula that adds up the part-timers into equivalent
full-timers. It seems the only way to avoid the expensive mandate is
to not hire, as unemployment rises. There are plenty of jobs
available in the part of the public sector that must interpret and
implement the complexity of ObamaCare, though.
Republicans continue to
try to repeal it, with the latest effort in the House to defund the
provisions that require government spending. Some ask why the
Republicans don’t come up with their own plan. Here is why.
Republicans, and other
ObamaCare opponents, don’t want to mandate that citizens buy their
own insurance. But they won’t take on the other federal mandate that
everyone who goes to an emergency room must be treated because,
truly, most of us don’t want to see sick people screaming in pain
and dying on the steps of the hospital. So, someone has to pay:
either the patient or all of us through our own premiums or our
taxes.
Only solution to this
dilemma coming so far from the Obama administration, according to
Forbes magazine, is to allow Congress to exclude itself and its own
employees from the provisions of ObamaCare that Congress doesn’t
like.
Yes, August has been a
month of revelations. We are learning that there were at least 35
CIA operatives at the Benghazi compound, which could explain the
attack, except that none of them are allowed to testify as to what
they were doing there. Early suspicions that they were moving
weapons from Libya to rebels in Syria, without Congressional
approval, seem to be valid.
Some say that this
could be the Obama administration’s Iran-Contra scandal, but it
quickly lost momentum when its photogenic chief operative, Col.
Ollie North, showed up in Doonesbury cartoons as a cute puppy
wagging his tail in response to Congressional inquiry; the public
said “aawww” and moved on. Obama officials are bypassing Benghazi by
closing some American embassies in response to a new al-Qaida threat
that we know about, fortunately, because of the excellent
information the NSA is getting by monitoring all our phone calls and
email. A violation of our Fourth Amendment rights? Obama wags his
tail, wags the dog, voters move on to more interesting sex or
sports-oriented scandals.
Meanwhile, with all of
us told to be on alert for whatever the terrorists might be
planning, our president went golfing, again.
My August vacation? Not
sure where I and the country are going, but the handbasket offers an
interesting tour.
