The True Costs Of Bad Ideas

As people and media organizations seem to note every few years, the cost of nearly everything - including mailing a letter or package - keeps going up. While we generally know this to be true, there are often hidden cost increases that really should be receiving more media attention than merely the cost of a stamp.

We point this out as many communities across the country are discovering the "hidden" costs of electronic communication, as their post offices face the very real possibility of being eliminated.

A post office for a community is often more than just a building where mail comes to be sorted and delivered. Just like small-town schools and businesses are key to sustaining life in rural America, so too is the American Post Office, even in our modern era of electronic mail nearly everywhere.

As our staff have sadly noted more than once; no matter how fast your internet connection, you still can't send Grandma's cookies via your computer.

A similar issue has come up with the GOP's latest ideas on how to cut the budget, specifically Republican Paul Ryan's plans to turn Medicare and Medicaid into voucher-based, privatized systems.

Thankfully, it appears that an ever-growing number of America's seniors may not be conned by this particular GOP attempt to funnel more money to the wealthy and to insurance companies from those who can't afford it. In both CBS/New York Times and Washington Post/ABC News polls released last week, it's obvious that Americans are NOT in favor of sacrificing the stability of Medicare and Medicaid in order to continue financing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

To us, that's a no-brainer. The barely hidden cost of such a voucher system is obvious to anyone who has ever had to try and get private health care insurance in America, as every member of our staff have attempted, with varying degrees of success.

If you think it's difficult getting health insurance when you're young, healthy, and employed with a decent income, imagine trying to get private health care coverage when you're over 65, retired, and in less than perfect health. Even if you have a voucher, if no one is willing to take it - or costs are insanely high - any voucher the government would give you to cover the cost of health insurance would be rendered meaningless.

This is often the case with the attempt to privatize services that have worked well under government direction. In Washington state, they're finding this out with the cost of privatizing their state liquor control and sales systems. In Florida, the effort to privatize prisons is gaining the attention of many as a bad idea. There are growing numbers of bad ideas just like these.

We understand the appeal that ideas like this have for bean counters; privatizing the profits while socializing the losses of a business is, from the perspective of someone who is selfish, greedy, and myopic, a wonderful idea over the short term.

As we can see from the effects of the internet on the U.S. Postal Service, the hidden costs that come later - like the speeding up of the collapse of rural American towns - are the kinds of costs that corporate number crunchers rarely if ever figure into their claims that privatization will fix all of America's woes.

The true costs of bad ideas are rarely something their promoters will advertise up-front.

Friday Funday: Thanks And Hope

Every weekend, when each member of The Daily Felltoon staff usually gets some time away from our regular jobs, we like to do what we can to spend time with our friends and family, to recharge our internal batteries.

Whether that means we tinker around with an old vehicle, visit a national monument, or simply go to a baseball game, we think the time spent remembering NOT to work so hard is good for each of us, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

This weekend is a confluence of holiday celebrations, for those of many faiths. For nature worshipers, today is Earth Day. For people of both the Christian and Jewish faiths, this week, and this weekend, also have a very spiritual meaning to them.

In short, Earth Day to pagans, Easter to Christians and Passover to Jews, all have similar and related meanings.

For Christians, the season is about rebirth, and the belief that hope springs eternal. For Jews, the holiday is also about hope, and thankfulness, that we've been spared a horrible fate. For pagans, it's all about giving back to the world that we all live in.

We realize that not everyone is as lucky as we are.

For example, there are those in Japan who have lost their entire cities; their homes, their families, all the things in their lives that were so familiar, things they will never have again in quite the same way. Those across the U.S. who've been affected by tornados, or fires, or floods, are facing many of the same problems their neighbors in Japan are suffering through.

One of our own staff members suffered a similar series of tragedies nearly three years ago. In a very short time span, three sharp losses - including a major fire - destroyed the stability, and some of the income, of this staff member's life.

The rest of our staff, even before we began working together, helped out - as friends do.

When things seemed darkest, there was a comfortable chair, a place to work, words of kindness - and hope.

No matter what your spiritual beliefs are, we hope this weekend - or sometime soon - you take a moment to celebrate both of what two of the world's major religions are celebrating this weekend.

Be thankful for what you have, thankful that your life is as good as it is.

Then, give someone else the gift of hope.

Do something for someone they don't expect. Take a younger person under your wing, as a mentor. Or make a donation to your favorite high school or college athletic program. It doesn't have to be expensive, or even be something you purchase. You could simply give a smile and a wave to that neighbor you'd usually rather ignore.

Whatever you do, we ask that you give someone else some hope.

That's a gift that everyone can appreciate, and that the world needs more of all year long.

Either/Or

When the subject of politics arises, rarely is there a time when we can say that simple, binary, either/or positions tend to yield better results than a thoughtful, nuanced approach.

That being said, when a political topic moves from future speculation to reams of proven facts gained over time, the likelihood that a binary decision is the right one also tends to move from the realm of art, to the science of hard data. For example, over the last thirty years, it's been quite solidly proven that trickle-down economics doesn't work.

Politics is the art of compromise. It's a truism that is both simple, and yet, seems to be often forgotten these days, especially by those who claim they're leading the Republican party.

We say that not because we don't think there aren't leaders or wise thinkers who label themselves as Republicans. Rather, those individuals who seem to be directing the efforts of the Republican Party currently can't seem to listen to anyone but themselves.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin - one of these self-appointed leaders - displayed a perfect example of that this week.

Rep. Ryan is holding a series of town hall meetings for his constituents this week across his home state. At one such event, Rep. Ryan was confronted by a constituent who described himself as a "lifelong conservative". This constituent wanted to know - in the face of massive and growing income inequality, and with such large fiscal pressures on governments of all sizes, why Ryan continues to fight to keep the Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich, the same ones that President Obama aims to see eliminated.

Frankly, Ryan couldn't answer the man acceptably, in large part we believe, because Mr. Ryan chose to be obtuse, not because Mr. Ryan doesn't know the answer.

Conversely, many other Republican leaders seem to have forgotten the binary rules they insisted were immutable facts during the health care insurance reform debates last year, regarding polls and what the American people think. Thankfully, writer and journalist Steve Benen pointed out the hypocrisy on that issue already.

In short, Mr. Benen points out that Republicans said, according to the polls they chose to read, that the American people didn't want health insurance reform - so Republican leaders insisted it should not happen. Although many polls and statistics taken before reform was passed did not agree with the GOP claims, for the sake of their argument, we'll agree with them on the polls they cherry-picked.

Now, when looking at the polling on how Americans want to fix the nation's budget problems, Americans OVERWHELMINGLY, in every poll we've seen, by WIDE margins, oppose massive cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Instead, they want the wealthy and corporations to pay more taxes. They also want the rich and big corporations to actually PAY those taxes, not play paperwork games with numbers.

As Mr. Benen points out, the Republican Party leadership has now painted themselves into one of those rare, binary, either/or political corners, that will require them to make a hard choice. Either the GOP leaders truly want to listen to what the American people want. Or they don't, and they were lying when they fought those health insurance reform battles.

There is more than one reason that politics is the ART of compromise. Art requires nuance, after all.

Rarely is it as simple as "Us" and "Them".