Monthly Archives: November 2004

What Are We Fighting For?

Uncategorized

I just watched Unconstitutional. It ended with this question: what are we fighting for?

Most people would say we are fighting for our freedom. That would include our freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom from the government detaining us for no reason, freedom from our government using their power to steal our property.

Yet our response to attacks on us is to turn around and restrict many of those things we say we’re fighting for. People who are Muslims in this country have been beaten in American Federal prisons, held for nearly a year with no charges filed. People who are exercising their right to protest find themselves under FBI scrutiny.

For those of you that have not yet seen Unconstitutional, you should see it. If you are thinking it is like Fahrenheit 9/11, think again. This is not a stick-a-microphone-in-a-politician’s-face-to-make-him-look-stupid movie. This is a movie loaded with first-person interviews and actual footage of events. They interviewed a Muslim family fleeing oppression in Syria who had three family members held in terrible conditions — in Seattle — after 9/11. They showed footage of a Washington, D.C. police unit infiltrating a peaceful protest during Bush’s inauguration. The parallels to the Japanese internment camps years ago are startling.

This is something we should all be MAD about.

Reducing Health Care Costs While Expanding Coverage

Society, Uncategorized

I heard an interesting interview on KMUW this morning while driving in to work. They were talking to Kansas Governer Kathleen Sibelius about her health care reform package.

One point she kept making is that providing basic coverage to the uninsured eventually reduces costs for everyone. They are no longer showing up at the expensive ER for everything, and a lot of costly illnesses get prevented by having good regular medical care. This translates into lower insurance premiums. That argument makes a lot of sense, and I wonder why it has taken people so long to realize it. And it also benefits the uninsured, who get better care.

She is also proposing ways to reduce overhead — “paper shuffling” in the system. Apparently 1/3 of the cost of health care is for administration.

On the more mundane side, she is combining several state agencies — including the one to run this new program — into a single health care office in the state government to reduce bureaucracy and expand negotiating power.

And part of the program is encouraging personal responsibility — expanding education programs targeted at both children and adults to encourage healthy lifestyles. She says that will give us healthier citizens down the road, which translates into reduced medical costs.

She plans to pay for it with a $0.50 increase in tobacco taxes. Fitting, somehow.

There’s also an article in the Wichita Eagle.