May
16
Health Care and the State of the Union
Filed Under Life, Politics | Leave a Comment
Here are two great columns from The Wall Street Journal. If you haven’t already read them you should.
The first, The Republican Health-Care Surrender by Dick Armey details one of the biggest problem Republicans are facing… Their complete surrender on health care. I don’t want government run health care I have private health care insurance an I’m happy with it. It’s not cheap, it costs me roughly $600.00 a quarter and it doesn’t cover everything and that’s fine with me… I don’t expect it to.
I chose the coverage I have based on my needs and what I could afford and it covers everything it should. I’m not bothered by paying my doctor $90.00 out of my pocket for an office visit or paying a $5000.00 deductible in a calendar year, what I do want from my health insurance is protection from catastrophic expenses and that’s what it provides.
Part of the problem with the health care debate is that to many people want their health insurance to pay for every little thing… Whether it’s $20.00 co-pay for an office visit or $6.00 co-pay for prescription drugs they have an unrealistic expectations of what their health insurance should cover.
Before anyone starts telling me I’m living in a fantasy land… I spent the past year dealing with a health problem and had surgery to correct that problem on January 17th so I’m intimately familiar with the system. I can’t say any thing bad about my doctors, the nurses or physicians assistants who treated me or the insurance company who never once questioned the decisions my doctors or I made.
The Second is today’s Potomac Watch column, The State of the Union? Furious. by Kimberley A. Strassel.
Ms Strassel writes:
The state of the union is angry. Citizens are furious about gas prices and health-care costs, broken schools and property taxes. These are the leaky hydrants, the constant reminders that government hasn’t done much for them lately. Their fury has bubbled as they’ve watched Washington obsess over itself – dealing out earmarks, paying off constituencies, launching probes into political enemies. Accomplishing zip.
This anger is the best way to describe today’s political landscape. Ever since Republicans were routed in 2006, and more recently with their loss of three special elections, the party has been in a debate about what changed in the country and what to do in response. In the primaries, as Mike Huckabee pitched to evangelicals, Rudy Giuliani pitched to fiscal conservatives, and Mitt Romney pitched to anything that moved, some went so far as to declare the “death” of the Reagan coalition.
She’s absolutely correct, Republicans (and Democrats for that matter) in Washington painfully out touch with what matters on main street. They’re more interested in pork barrel projects, pandering to special interests or playing politic games than addressing real issues and solving problems. The soaring price of gas is just one example… We’re stupid out here, we know when lied to or when we’re being pandered to. Rather then address the issues that have to high prices, principally the weak dollar, our leaders put forth idea like a windfall profits tax on oil companies or temporary moratorium on the federal gas tax. If they really wanted to address the issue they’d be talking about strengthening the dollar, building new refineries and increasing domestic oil production so we weren’t as dependent on foreign imports.
The Reagan Coalition isn’t dead but it’s no longer being represented… and there in lies the problem for Republicans, they’ve lost the trust of the people that helped bring them to power. If they want to have any chance in November they have to get it back and champion an agenda that will inspire them.
May
15
Clueless
Filed Under Politics | Leave a Comment
It gives me no joy to say this but the Republican Party is headed for a fall… They’re going to lose the White House and more seats in the house and senate in November unless they get a clue.
They’ve alienated the party’s conservative base, they have no agenda, no ideas, and no clue about the trouble they’re in. I’m not going to pretend to be some sort of policy wonk and tell them how to fix what’s broken; I’m just going to say what I think. And from my perspective out here on Main Street we’d all better get used to the idea of a Democrat in the White House and Democrats in control of the House and Senate because from what I’m seeing and hearing out here the Republican Party doesn’t have a prayer… They’ve lost their way and stopped fighting for the principles that got them elected. If they can’t find their footing and stop trying to out democrat the democrats and start fighting for traditional conservative principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, and a strong national defense they’re toast.
I don’t have much hope of that happening though… The Republican Party has lost its way and the leadership seems clueless about how to right the ship.
Just my 2 cents…
May
9
Apple Tops in Tech Support?
Filed Under Computers, Technology | Leave a Comment
I first saw this Computerworld article several days ago and I forgot about while I was dealing with more pressing issues. But it popped up in my inbox again today saw I thought I’d put my two cents in.
Personally, I don’t put much stock in much of what Consumer Reports says but I have to admit I mostly agree with their surveys findings on tech support. I’ve had good and bad experiences with tech support from Adobe, Microsoft, HP and others over the years but Apple has consistently been the easiest to deal with… I won’t say they’re perfect but in my experience Apple’s tech support is significantly better than what passes for average these days.
In other tech news:
Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) may cripple some systems with endless reboots. The problem seems to be confined to systems with AMD processors. More information and suggested workarounds here…
May
6
Gas Prices and Politics
Filed Under Money, Politics | Leave a Comment
The only thing worse than a trip to the gas pump these days is listening to John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama talk about energy policy. John McCain and Hillary Clinton both say they’ll bring us relief at the pump with a temporary moratorium on the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax. To his credit Barack Obama opposes the idea moratorium as a political stunt but supports a 1970s style windfall profits tax on oil companies (as does Clinton).
Never mind that the federal government already takes 35% right off the top with the corporate income tax, Barack Obama wants to slap and additional tax on what he calls “excess profits”. What exactly are excess profits? As far as I know a business is supposed to turn a profit and theres no limit on how large that profit can be. But that’s neither here nor there, the real issue is this…
If our elected leaders really wanted bring down the price of gas and stimulate the economy they’d be talking about tapping domestic energy supplies both off shore and in Alaska, reducing the corporate tax rate and strengthening the dollar. They wouldn’t be talking about cheap political stunts or reviving failed policies from the 1970s.
Lets not forget windfall profit taxes have been tried before and they ended up reducing domestic oil production and increasing imports*… Exactly what we don’t want.
*The Wall Street Journal, “Windfall Profits for Dummies” May 3, 2008, Page A10: “The Congressional Research Service found in a 1990 analysis that the tax reduced domestic oil production by 3% to 6% and increased oil imports from OPEC by 8% to 16%”.
May
5
No Surprise Really
Filed Under Money, Technology | Leave a Comment
I wanted to write something about the Microsoft / Yahoo non merger on Saturday but I could come up with anything more than YAWN.
I’m not really surprised that talks between the two companies broke down or that Microsoft withdrew its acquisition offer. The deal never made sense to me and to be honest I never thought it would close so I really wasn’t surprised when the negotiations fell apart.
That’s pretty much it… No surprises anywhere, not in the deal falling apart and not in Wall Streets reaction to the news.
Anyway how about them Yankees?
Apr
30
Recession?
Filed Under Money, Politics | Leave a Comment
Can we put an end to the recession talk at least for now? The last time I checked a recession was defined as two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth. So far we haven’t had a single quarter of negative growth so all this talk of a recession is, well, premature.
Make no mistake the economy is tough shape what with the struggling housing market, credit crunch, high oil prices and week dollar. But we’re not in a recession.
Take a swing over to Kudlow’s Money Politic$ and read Recession? What Recession? for interesting take on today’s GDP number.
Apr
30
I installed Windows Vista Business SP1 on a couple of test PCs recently and I’ve been putting it and Office 2007 through their paces over the last couple of days. For the most part I’m happy with them… Vista’s Aero interface is such a radical depart from Windows XP that it takes a little getting used and the same can said for the ribbon bars in Office 2007 but once you get used to the changes they’re not bad.
My biggest complaint with Windows Vista is the User Account Controls feature, it annoys the hell out of me. If I’m logged in as an administrator and performing administrative tasks I shouldn’t have to click through a confirmation dialog to confirm that I actually want to perform the task that I just elected to perform.
But aside from the aforementioned annoyances Vista Business SP1 is stable, and does what I need it to do. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be abandoning Windows XP Professional or Office 2003 though. I’m happy with both and they do what I need to do well enough that I don’t see a compelling reason to upgrade.
That said Windows Vista Business SP1 looks pretty solid and with sales of Windows XP scheduled to end on June 30th Vista Business looks like an acceptable replacement.
Apr
27
Missing Laptop Causes Security Concerns
Filed Under Computers, Security, Technology | Leave a Comment
Stories about missing laptops containing confidential information are becoming an everyday occurrence so I wasn’t surprised when I came across this story about about a pilot’s missing laptop causing security concerns at a number of airports.
I’m not going to beat up on the pilot or the TSA they seem to have handled the incident properly. What I am going to do use this as chance to beat the Safe Hex drum.
What bothers isn’t that laptop containing confidential was apparently stolen, that happens more often than anyone would like it to. What bothers me is the apparent lack of encryption. If you’re carrying around a laptop that contains confidential information you should be using some type of encryption to protect that information. No technology is fool proof or 100 percent effective but using products like PGP whole Disk Encryption greatly reduces the chances that the bad guys will be able to exploit the data on a stolen laptop.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s your personal financial information or pass codes for airport security checkpoints you need to take steps to protect it. Making sure your laptop requires a user name and strong password* to log on is a good first step. Adding encrypting, whether it’s whole disk encryption or just file encryption is an important second level of protection that all to often over looked.
*A strong password should be at least 8 characters and include letters, numbers, mixed capitalization and at least one special character. It should also be easy to remember but hard to guess.
Apr
24
Changes
Filed Under Announcements | Leave a Comment
Just a quick note to let everyone know that I’ve closed registrations and opened up comments so you won’t have to register to leave comments anymore.
Apr
20
Congratulations Danica!
Filed Under Sports | Leave a Comment
It took her a little while longer than I thought it would but Danica Patrick made history on Sunday by becoming the first female driver to win a major auto racing event. Patrick took the checkered flag in her 50th career start at the Indy Japan 300 .
Congratulations Danica, the first one is always the sweetest.