Political Commentary

Representative Hunter,

It is a great pleasure to hear from you. Don’t take this wrong, but I have recently been wondering what knucklehead is my “representative” in the the House. I am delighted to find out it is you. Of course, you haven’t yet fallen into the category of knucklehead for me, so congratulations!

In all seriousness, I find it unfortunate that you seem to have very little voice in congress, along with all the other serious conservatives there. I am a victim of our stimulus package because I used to work at a defense contractor (SAIC) on a project that was unexpectedly canceled. Next Friday, if nothing comes up before then, I will be unemployed. Since unemployment is so low, I will be taking a 7K per month cut in pay. This is kind of devastating to my financial future, especially with thousands of other defense contractors also being put out of work. Jobs are a little hard to find here. I will probably be forced to move out of California in order to cut my living costs. The really bright spot is the extra $25.00 per week I will be getting from the “stimulus plan". I wonder if you could thank your mates across the isle for their amazing generosity?

On another issue, I am a two time leukemia survivor. I am trying to recover from my second stem cell transplant. I get chemotherapy treatments every three months that cost about 10K. Overall, I believe my medical treatments have cost over 2M dollars, which have been paid for by my insurance company without much problem. My major problems have been with the hospital billing which is remarkably screwed up. My copays and treatments for side effects last year added up to over 12 thousand dollars. I initially had a survival probability of about 18%. When I relapsed after 3 years, my survival probability went down to about 3%. All those probabilities notwithstanding, I am still here after over 6 years. I have ridden in 6 century rides on my bike, helping to raise millions of dollars to fight blood cancers for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I walked the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon in 2008 because I figured out I needed to learn how to walk again. I have inspired a lot of people, and am a motivational speaker and a volunteer to help people who are diagnosed with leukemia. I rode for the MS Society to raise money for them, and I have spoken on behalf of the San Diego Blood Bank on Roger Hedgcock’s show, to support Blood and Bone Marrow donations. I believe that my life is worth something, but if I read the Healthcare “Reform” bill correctly, I probably would not be here today if this bill had been in place 6 years ago. I also believe that I have made a significant contribution to this city and nation in the fight against blood cancers, as well as contributing as a retired Navy Captain. It appalls me to hear me and people like me being characterized as “astroturf” or “nazis” or “protesters in Brooks Brother’s suits” or someone who is putting out disinformation. I have fought for this country and sacrificed seeing a great deal of my son’s life for my country, and have served far longer than our President. I resent his implication that I am one of the above. I am a patriot, I was willing to give up my life for this country, and I am not willing to let some snot nosed, communist thug take it away from me. We need health reform, but this aint it! I am getting so mad that I have been thinking of running for Congress. I probably won’t have anything else useful to do.

Now that I have that off my chest, I want to wish you well, and hope you keep fighting these guys off as best you can. We have so many real problems, it is a shame that our government is wasting it’s time trying to pass a national health care system that is clearly stupid. My proposals:

- Eliminate the 14th amendment - no more anchor babies
- Eliminate all benefits for illegal aliens
- Close the border with our Defense Department. That is defense after all.
- Create a viable guest worker program
- Eliminate the Department of Homeland Security
- Eliminate all the extra Intelligence agencies
- Eliminate the Department of Education
- Eliminate the Departments of the Navy, Army and Air Force
- Eliminate all the duplicative federal police agencies
- Eliminate the ridiculous lending laws that got us into this recession in the first place
- Create a Constitutional Amendment making it impossible for the Federal Government to take over or own any part of ANY business
- Create a Constitutional Amendment making it impossible for the Federal Government to have anything to do with dictating my health care choices
- Create a Constitutional Amendment forcing any able bodied person who receives welfare or any other kind of Federal aid to work or not get paid. There are plenty of unskilled infrastructure jobs that could be done by these people if they would just get off their back sides and get moving.
- Create a Constitutional Amendment either eliminating the Social Security ponzi scheme, or make it a trust fund like it should have been from the beginning, that Congress cannot raid, and that the funds given by the taxpayers are not used to fund current recipients. The money that I give to that fund is MY money, not anyone else’s.

I have many other ideas that I would love to discuss with you that I am sure you would not necessarily agree with, but I love a good, honest debate.

Best Regards,
Ted Wilcox

El Presidente Bush and Congress have collaborated to give the American people a bribe, oh, I mean a check. This is a very stupid move, motivated by political considerations on both sides of the isle. For the Republicans, they are honestly trying to stimulate the economy. Too bad it is a completely ridiculous and expensive way to do it. The Democrats don’t really want a stimulated economy, they just want to buy votes. I think they are counting on this debacle not stimulating the economy, but they can say to their constituents how caring they are since they got them some extra money. There are a lot of issues here, so I will try to spell them all out.

Lets start with the economic stimulus side of things. First there is the political consideration. The Republicans want to stimulate the economy so that the Democrats lose that as a campaign issue. The economy actually isn’t that bad. The housing market is in a normal cyclic slowdown. The mortgage “crisis” happened at a fortuitous time for the Democrats. The Press can always find some poor person somewhere to show how miserable life in the United states is. Some states are suffering at the hands of politicians who can’t keep their hands out of pockets. Thus we all believe that the economy is bad. This is good for the Democrats, because they can blame the policies of the current administration for the slowdown of the economy. So the Republicans desperately want to stimulate the economy to eliminate this issue from the presidential campaign. There is no question in my mind that putting more cash in the hands of consumers, stimulates the economy. The question is, does $300.00 - $1200.00 per person represent enough stimulation to actually accomplish anything. Most people I have heard about plan to pay bills with their check. This does not stimulate the economy, because it simply pays for something that already stimulated the economy. Besides, what are you going to pay for? A small fraction of your rent or mortgage? Part of a car payment? This amount of money really doesn’t go very far. Regardless of Republican wishful thinking, I doubt if there will be much stimulus to this package.

On the Democratic side, this is pure bribery. They talk about economic stimulus, and have agreed with the Republicans about that, but this is totally self serving, since they want to buy votes. They tried to get a check for people who don’t even pay taxes too. But they will settle for what they got. They simply want to buy votes. So how much will you sell your vote for. I have to admit that I probably have a price. Is it $300.00? No. Is it $600.00? No. Is it $1200.00? No. I think if they would pay me about $500,000.00, I would probably vote democratic regardless of the harm I believe their policies would do. Again, how much would it take for them to buy your vote?

Now on the practical side of things, does this even make sense? The timing of this payment is clearly geared toward the November election. I think they are going to send out checks in May. Now I ask you, how much are they going to spend on paper and postage to send these checks out? I submit it will be millions of dollars. Does this make sense when we are running huge budget deficits? Aren’t many of us receiving checks in the mail from the government anyway? Why do it twice when we could combine this “stimulus” with tax refunds? Why not just give a special tax credit of whatever the appropriate amount, and the government could save millions of dollars, and accomplish the same “economic stimulus". Of course, this isn’t as good for the Democrats, because it would look like they were supporting tax cuts, and it wouldn’t look like a bribe, oh, I mean gift, to people.

Because this is already a done deal, and my opinion isn’t going to really change anything, I have a suggestion. Really stimulate the economy with your check, by doing something wonderful with that money. I am going to donate mine to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, to try to find a cure for blood cancers. I would love to have a bunch of other people join me and donate to my account at the link above. However, equally good would be to donate to the charity of your choice. Give to your church or whatever your favorite charity is. You know what would be great? Write a comment on this blog telling readers where you are going to donate your check! That would really be fun!

Before I get started, imagine my shock when I looked at a Readers Digest and saw an article with exactly the same title. It was kind of funny really. That article was about something completely different too.

After the Tuesday primaries, I asked a friend why they chose to vote the way they did. The response was that they wanted change. I think we all want some kind of change, but change by itself is neither positive or negative. It is just change. During the current political campaign, I have been laughing at the candidates during debates as they argue back and forth who is really the candidate of change. “I am the candidate of change.” “No, I am.” “You are not, I am.” “Hunh unh.” “I said it first!” Well that is all pretty funny, and doesn’t really mean anything ultimately.

I think rather than arguing about who is the candidate of change, the candidates should really reveal what kind of changes they want to make, so that the American people can decide if they are proposing good or bad changes. I propose that everyone should make a list of changes they would like to see, and a list of changes they would not like to see. Everyone would have a different list of changes, probably. Then they should take a careful look at the candidates and see if they offer the changes you want. I will describe some of the changes I would like here.

First the good changes:

Lower taxes
Smaller government
Less government spending
Repeal of the 14th ammendment
Repeal of the 16th ammendment
Enforcement of the 2nd ammendment
Enforcement of immigration laws
Elimination of entitlements for illegal aliens
Less government interference in my life
Protecting our borders
Supporting our border patrol agents
An intelligent energy policy
Controlled end of US occupation of Iraq

There are a few, for example. Now, what I would consider bad changes:

Increased taxes
Drivers licenses for illegal aliens
Government mandated health care
Immediate withdrawal from Iraq
Global warming and other countries dictating US energy policy
Endangering the lives of our border patrol agents by prosecuting them when they defend themselves
Increasing entitlements for illegal aliens

OK. There are a few changes that I have heard about from our candidates of change. Now look at your lists and see what candidate supports the “good” changes, and what candidate supports the “bad” changes. This should give you a pretty clear idea of who to vote for. Of course, you want to vote for the person who supports your good changes. Now, for my lists, I don’t see anyone supporting any of my good list. Supporting the bad list to greater or lesser extent - John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barak Obama. Obama supports the highest number of the bad changes on my list. This means that as an agent of change, Obama represents really bad change for me. While I am very impressed with Obama’s demeanor and speaking ability, and he seems like a man with integrity, he does not support any of the changes that I would like to see. So he would not be a good candidate of change for me. I would rather have the status quo. I guess status quo would lead me to John McCain. But I would really like change too! To me, McCain does not represent change. He represents continuation of the bad policies of the current administration. To me, changing gender or race of a president is completely irrelevant, and a dangerous way to select a president.

It is really sad when you have a choice of status quo, which is bad, or bad changes, which is even worse. Unfortunately, that is the best the current crop of major candidates have to offer. I would invite all of my readers to make a similar list for themselves and see what candidate you arrive at. Maybe I will write myself in again. That would be fun.