Maryland - We Own That!

Martin O'Malley has been in the news a lot lately running around the state whining to elected state officials to get on his side and build more failing casinos.  He says more failing casinos will help raise tax dollars to fund his out-of-control spending.  This past week he met with the two beers of the General Assembly, Busch and Miller.  O'Malley wants to plop a new casino in what I believe is Miller's back yard.  It's his hope that perhaps this casino will help generate new revenue for the state, since the others aren't working out as expected.  Rocky Gap anyone?

I got to thinking.  There are a lot of government-owned entities in this state, either by the City of Baltimore or the State of Maryland.  Maryland owns several casinos now.  The state of Maryland.  The government of Maryland.  Not private businesses, but the government.  The casinos include Ocean Downs in West Ocean City, Hollywood Casino in Perryville, Maryland Live! in Hanover, and an unbuilt unwanted casino in Rocky Gap.  Oh, and Baltimore wants one, too.  I think the deal Rawlings-Blake was trying to sell to the casino industry is "you raise a lot of money with gambling, we take it all, and everyone's happy!"

Outside of the casinos, the government also owns the Rocky Gap Lodge and Golf Resort.  Then there are the stadiums and arenas - Orioles Park at Camden Yards, PSiNet/Ravens/M&T Bank stadium, and the First Mariner Baltimore Arena Civic Center.  Oh, let's not forget the former Festival Hall and the Baltimore Convention Center.  Speaking of convention centers, the City of Baltimore owns the 752 room convention center hotel with the Hilton sign on it.

The Maryland Zoo - that's owned by the City of Baltimore.  BWI airport and Martin State Airport - both owned by the state.  Baltimore Metro Subway and Baltimore Light Rail - both owned by the state.

How about boats?  Police boats and fire boats, they make sense for state and local governments to own, right?  What about a clipper topsail schooner?  We call it the Pride of Baltimore II.  It's owned by the state of Maryland.

Entertainment?  The National Aquarium in Baltimore is owned by the City of Baltimore (though managed by a non-profit organization).  The Maryland State Fairgrounds and the adjoining Timonium Race Course - owned by the state of Maryland.

Need to park?  Baltimore City owns 17 parking garages and 23 surface lots throughout the city through the Parking Authority of Baltimore City.

I'm sure there are many more examples.  And I'd love to hear them if you can think of any.

Isn't there a general agreement in a free society that the government should not be in direct competition with private business?  As I recall from my economics classes in college, it's called socialism when the government owns what should be considered private enterprise.  Isn't that what we're trying to avoid?  What?  No???  Oh, well, never mind then.

Healthcare Madness

Big Daddy Obama gave his much-anticipated fatherly socialized healthcare reform speech last night. Did you watch it? I watched some of it. And I certainly felt like he was hollering at me for not being a good listener. Seriously, did I leave the refrigerator open again? Or did Michelle find out that I found his cabinet of girly magazines in the basement and now he's taking it out on me?

Some highlights of what he said:

1) Socialized healthcare will be self-sufficient. Do you mean self-sufficient like the Post Office, Amtrak, Medicare and Medicaid? Or self-sufficient like the tax payers will pump billions of dollars into this new government program in order to sustain it?

Directly from the liberal talking points:

Won't add a dime to the deficit and it is paid for upfront. This is because it will reform the healthcare system and curb healthcare cost growth. (This tells me absolutely nothing) invests in quality improvements (sounds like increased spending), consumer protections (more increased spending because of the required government oversight), prevention, and premium assistance (more spending). The plan fully pays for (itself )...with a new revenue including a fee on insurance companies that sell very expensive plans (this sounds like a tax. Let's penalize good insurance plans???)

Requires additional cuts if savings are not realized (because we know the savings will not be realized. Come on - the government is running it! This is the same organization that pays $600 to procure a hammer) Under the plan, if the savings promised at the same time of enactment don't materialize, the President will be required to put forth additional savings to ensure that the plan does not add to the deficit (let's see - need to cut costs - like......denying coverage? Not paying doctors and hospitals? How else do you cut costs in a healthcare plan? Can't raise premiums - they're already government subsidized.)

This is a disaster waiting to happen! If you're a smart person coming out of high school or in college, would you want to go to medical school? You will not live comfortably like in the days of yore. Currently Medicare and Medicaid do NOT pay the full costs of procedures and care provided. The government system pays only a portion of the costs. The shortfall in payment is made up somewhere. Where would that be? Oh, yeah. Everyone else has to pay higher costs for their medical treatment. So currently everyone who is not relying on the government for their healthcare pays artificially higher medical costs, most of which is covered by our own private health insurance companies.

And now the government wants to run an even bigger portion of the healthcare system and reform the system and remove waste? I think I found the waste - the government bureaucracies that interfere with the current system. How is the government plan going to help doctors and hospitals? What about all of the other people that are employed in the industry? This can only hurt them - less money received for treatments means less money to be spent on buying new equipment, hiring more nurses, building new facilities, etc....

2) Socialized healthcare will be better because it will allow for more competition (conservative buzzword) and we all know that competition lowers prices. We need more competition? Because Kaiser Permanente, MetLife Medical, UnitedHealth, Blue Cross, Aetna, Cigna, Fortis, Assurant, Golden Rule, Health Net, Humana, Premera, Principal, Regence, Shelter, Thrivant, Unitrin, and Wellpoint do not provide enough competition???

This reminds me of the old joke - how do you know when a politician is lying? His lips are moving.

3) Whether or not you like the President's speech (this President or any other) - be polite and do not heckle him, (read South Carolina Congressman Wilson). You're just making an ass of yourself and your party. And did you see Obama's face when Wilson called him a liar? Obama was PISSED! I could almost read what he was thinking: "My white mother who raised me by herself would be really mad if I ran out there and gave Congressman Wilson a beat-down right now."

4) Socialized healthcare will not impact your current healthcare insurance. I don't believe it. My current health insurance (which I think is very good) has to be efficient and provide a profit to it's shareholders. I'm okay with that. However, if they started treating their members like crap, they can leave the plan. It's in the private health insurance companies' best interests to provide good high quality care to their members.

With the "public option", there is no profit motive. It can be as inefficient as it wants to be. See Amtrak and the Post Office. And if people opt for the government-subsidized healthcare plan, the private health insurance companies will lose their economies of scale and will not be able to compete and will eventually go out of business. THEN you will be forced into the government's socialized healthcare plan.

Additionally, one of the provisions of the socialized healthcare plan is that if your employer makes any changes to it's current healthcare options, it will be FORCED to also offer the socialized plan. How does that NOT affect my private insurance company? This requirement DIRECTLY affects my private health insurance company.

This reminds me of the old joke - how do you know when.....

Healthcare Plan

I received this spam email, but I thought it was funny:

We're going to pass a Health Care Plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn't read it, and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What possibly could go wrong?

The Jungle

I have wanted to read this book for years, but with all of the history books that I bought sitting on my bookshelf, I thought it more prudent to read them first.

Then I went out and bought The Jungle and put it on my bookshelf. Then I forgot that I bought it. Then a friend loaned me a copy of The Jungle. And I read it. Then I found the copy that I bought. It's tough getting old.

The Jungle was written by Baltimore native Upton Sinclair in 1906 and focuses on an immigrant family from Lithuania who move to Chicago to improve their lives. They get jobs with the meat packing companies and quickly buy a house. They think that they are moving up quickly, only to have their lives crushed by the brutal reality of political and business corruption in Chicago.

The book is most famous for its detailed descriptions of the meat packing industry including the slaughter and processing of the animals, and the horid working conditions. This book is to the meat packing industry what Moby Dick was to the whaling industry. Lots of details.

As a result of the book there was a public outcry about the quality of meat and the conditions that the workers were made to endure and meat sales tumbled. This outcry led to the passing of the Meat Inspeaction Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, in addition to the creation of what would eventually become the Food and Drug Administration.

While the premise of the book is simple - the absolute ruin of a family, I found the facts about the writing of the book absolutely fascinating. Sinclair, a card-carrying Socialist, set out to expose the labor conditions of the industry. He disguised himself and got hired by one of the companies and worked there for 7 weeks in order to gain insight and eventually wrote his book.

Though his objective was to expose the working conditions and the labor strife, he actually did little to help that, but was the catalyst to a revolution in food processing. Years later in an interview he joked that he was aiming for the heart, but hit the stomach.

I enojoyed 97% of the book. The last 2 chapters Sinclair must have been smoking the whacky weed because he goes off into this tangent about a speech given by a socialist. This goes on and on. And on and on. Did I mention that it also goes on and on?

The speech blithers about how workers can take control of the means of production and everyone will be happy. Everyone will be equal. The collective will determine what needs to be produced and will determine the best means to achieve the goals of production. His argument is unrealistic and he fails to understand the basic human desire to compete. No one will be equal.

Additionally, with competition, bad products will not be purchased and these companies will fail (unless, of course, the Obama Administration continues to save them). Competition, when allowed to operate freely, but fairly, will better a society. We can all observe the sucess of Socialism\Communism throughout Eastern Europe during the post-World War II era. It didn't work.

So my recomendation is to read this book, but stop reading once he gets to the chapter where he goes to listen to the speech by the Socialists. It will drive you nuts. Or, on the other hand, read it and realize what a screwball Sinclair really was. He truly believed the stuff he wrote.

The Jungle can be purchased on Amazon.com or at any bookstair for very little money.