I know, I should know better but I thought that after eight years of that guy with the name that sounds like it might be a brand name for a male chastity belt and Dubya, his little monkey who signed their edicts....well, after that and considering the mood of the electorate, the mood of our times for that matter, the growing no,the skyrocketing support for candidates peddling change.....well you almost had a right to think that real change could be accomplished just by replacing one administration with another. In that heady period one often heard candidates extoll the virtues of shutting down Guantanimo, ending the wars of Dick and Dubya, improving our economic situation by putting millions back to work repairing and rebuilding our sorely neglected infrastructure and completely overhauling our health care system. Early on, during the campaign to replace the D&D administration, some of the more progressive candidates even bandied about the phrase "single payer plan".
Now, a year after the election and ten months into the new administration....well , I don't think it's necessary to itemize it's short-comings. With few exceptions our situation has yet to show any real improvement. So far, the biggest success has been the " cash-for-clunkers" program, and even that didn't reach it's full potential because it was not sufficiently funded.
I'll tell you, the whole thing torques me somethin' fierce. We must have a health-care systen which is not connected to our employers, both for our industries'competitive position and to prevent termination of health-care in the event of employment termination. But what have we wound up with? OK, I havn't read it,but have heard it discussed by experts and it sounds to me like the new health plan, which requires more than a thousand pages to cover, yet is pretty much the same one we had before,except it will cost us more and will hand health insurance companys even more profits. Why is it ok for health insurance companies to drive the rest of our employers off the cliff?
On another subject entirely: You may have noticed that some of my shopping buttons were not operating the last cpl of days. That should be all better in a day or so. The problem has been reported.
