Issues, the kind which we vote upon, become enshrined in law through various processes. Sometimes, an individual starts a petition to gain signatures so that it can be heard before committees. It might require a given number of signers before this can occur. Occassionally it can be placed as a referendum vote on a ballot; this might be at the local or municipal levels. It also must be an accepted way to introduce an issue before the body; not all will allow this.
It can become introduced at the Federal level with a House Resolution, where it can be voted on to become a Bill (you will see these abbreviated as “H.R. + number…”). They are proposed, generally, by individual members of the House, who might join forces with others to set out these Resolutions. Once passed, they are turned over to other individuals who actually go about constructing the Bill by creating its specific legal language. It may wind up different than its original intent.
At least I think this is how it all works. It’s only vague concepts I’ve grasped from my limited understanding of Civics and phrases I’ve heard that gives me the basis of my writing here. What this really means, I don’t know. It’s one of the vagaries of a larger subject I have difficulties, in reality, fleshing out how this all fits together. It’s something that would probably behoove us to understand, though. I’m trying to sound intelligent, and perhaps I’ve made a great, big blunder obviously apparent to all, but myself. I think we sometimes just want to seem smart for appearances’ sake, rather than to admit ignorance to a subject everyone else already seems to be an expert analysis of. This could lead to making great, big, whopping mistakes, which could impact our lives enormously.
Issues are generally single-subject matters, which often have numerous subset issues inherent to them. There is generally no specific formula that can apply broadly across the spectrum of humanity as it exists for individuals, as each individual lives with multiple factors differentiating circumstances peculiar to that unique individual.
Nevertheless, laws are made to encompass the totality of the society falling under its governance. Laws should be crafted as broadly as possible without bias or discrimination toward certain subsects of its society. It seems, though, that aspects of some rule can just not weigh equally across the whole. This is not due to discriminatory practices bound up in its laws, but because of the nature and diversity of life. Some will fail, despite seeming advantages. Others will gain, despite seeming disadvantages.
Sometimes laws will be crafted to encourage certain outcomes, and some become disparate where groups may benefit. Tax laws, for instance, apply to everybody, but behave in different ways. It generally reflects the outlook of the administration of the presidential cabinets’ outlook. It can be more or less favorable to the corporation versus the individual. Oftentimes, though, in this simple classification, we overlook the benefits gained by the poor, and to those who help them, in the separate laws we have exempting these people from much of the tax laws. Especially where we allow non-profit and religious groups an exemption from the rules made for commercialism (we as an economy).
Most people, for instance, believe that the Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress without knowledge of its actual contents, created a safety net for the poor to receive healthcare they had previous “no access” to. Both statements are deceptive. We need to pay attention to words. Access, in free countries, is available to all. There is no discriminatory action and no physical barriers in place to prevent anyone from visiting a doctor or a hospital to receive medical care. Occassionally this has occurred at clinics providing abortions, and there are certain laws in place regulating demonstraters from blocking the paths of care-seekers. But, this is the exception, rather than the rule.
The agenda to create a system of government oversight of health insurance has led to the hijacking of the term “access” to create a false connection in peoples’ minds that their individual rights are being violated because they are being physically discriminated against and prevented from going to a doctor. Their “access” has never been under attack. The hijackers want health insurance under Socialist/Communist oversight, so that they can control health insurance. They don’t want health insurance to be ruled by the Corporations who had created them, to begin with. That would keep their grabbing hands away from being able to control your potential life-saving or life-denying decisions. Is the government so efficient and well-equipped to act fast in a literal matter of individual life or death? I don’t think they can. Could it come to that?
I’m not particularly enamored of insurance agencies, but I do contend that they perform a function in society, if it is only existing as a “necessary evil”; in fact, I have worked for companies which have served insurance agencies, so I point out the dichotomy. But, I’m sure we all likely have: maybe you waited on an insurance agent, maybe you bought car insurance, etc. So, it’s probably affected all of us who live in developed societies, where, eventually insurance agencies will become part of the scene.
Financing is the means by which another company extends to you the use of their money so that you can acquire something for yourself. Generally, the benefit to the company is that they will charge an interest on top of the original amount extended, so that they can earn something for providing this service. They can make whatever arrangements they desire toward the company whose product or services you’ve acquired, but until you’ve paid off the entire amount to the one who has extended you this privilege, it is they who actually own or “hold title” to that item.
For homes, the agreement is usually called a “mortgage” and the contract is considered a “lien”. Unless the home is purchased outright, then the mortgage-lender wants to ensure that their “property”, or investment, receives some protection and care. Their investments are protected by laws in their favor requiring insurance be purchased until the loan is paid-off in full, and the lien is released. The company also benefits if the mortgage payment becomes delinquent. They can forclose on the property to force the law to recognize their right to the property by the breach of agreement via non-payment, and take the property. Therefore, they have doubly gained through the acquisition of property they have already received some of your interest payments on.
I think it’s reasonable to have this requirement. I don’t particularly care for enforced insurance, though. It should be enough that a person sustains loss of their own property and that should be enough grief, then to have to additionally force unneeded or unnecessary payments, for nothing, upon them. Then I feel like it’s a parasitic relationship of unnecessary middlemen.
The Affordable Care Act has become this. It was never anything additional to help the poor, and it does not help the poor. It only forces marginal wage-earners to pay insurance companies money they can barely generate. They are at such low scales that they cannot afford their rent, food, and other expenses, and yet would be found to be criminals, by law, since now you must pay health insurance companies, regardless of whether you can actually utilize the services. They do NOT receive government subsidies to receive insurance if their wages are too low. This is fact; not hyperbole. I know because I have personally experienced it! Instead, you receive an exemption, whose number and reason (which you must get pre-determined ahead of time, every year, now) must be reported to the government on your tax forms to see if you’re in compliance. So now the government is breathing heavy down the necks of the nation’s poor (thank you, so very much, Democrat Socialists)!
What leaves me flabbergasted is that medical professionals are unaware of this, and believe that the poor are receiving healthcare! I’m amazed! A woman who had helped my mother through her breast cancer treatments later discovered her own breast cancer. This woman’s parents have been profoundly absent and unavailable to this woman, and my Mother has reciprocated to help this woman through her own battles. Thankfully, both women have survived! The woman is a healthcare professional, herself. I have had to explain and re-explain why poor people cannot get “Obamacare.” I’ve mentioned this same issue on one of my followers sites, whose wife, in the medical industry, he says, has seen more poor people receving healthcare. He definitely reveals his leanings…
Medicaid, which is paid for by anyone working “above-the-table” through taxes withdrawn from each paycheck based on a percentage of your earned wages, is a Federal program, administered at the state level, which covers some very minor medical coverage for poor families. It was already in existence prior to Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) becoming law. What Obamacare has done is captured mandatory payments to health insurance companies from the people who are one level, earnings-wise, above those who would already be covered by Medicaid. The people at this next level are the ones who are taking chances with their hedged bets against their health and opting, either by necessity or close to it, to put tiny savings towards either larger purchases, or toward already existent needs. Their savings ability for home-ownership or a vehicle should not be infringed with new laws capturing their wealth to pay insurance companies. Aren’t insurance companies wealthy enough?
So, if I haven’t given you pause to change your voter registration from Democrat to Republican (since you now see that this is the result of a Democrat policy), let me explain further how you have been deceived. People hear what they want. I, myself, have never been taken by “hope” and “change” rhetoric. To me, it was always a slogan meaning nothing. President Obama has always said that this or that would be for “the middle class”. The rich can pretty much handle themselves, as they already demonstrate. But, you will notice how he’s practically never said that anything would be for “the poor” (except only in pretty much recent times). He’s always managed to exclude them!
Like I said, most people falsely assume that Medicaid covers all of the poor. It does not. Most people wrongly assume, because they hear what they want to believe and do not hear what is actually said, that it covers all people who are poor because Medicaid is the government program to help really poor families. But, it very rarely helps poor individuals, unless, perhaps, they have a pre-determined disability. So, how does this not help all of the poor? Because you are confusing the wording, where you believe that families include all of the poor. But, you are gravely mistaken.
Poor people, who happen to be single, are excluded from Medicaid! Because you can be poor, and not have had children, you are not included in the definition of an actual “family”. And so, millions of people, erroneously believing that poor people receive healthcare are wrong! They hear their own made-up definition, assigned as the “human family”, and vehemently stick to their guns, wrongly arguing their point! How cruel that a single person has to suffer some malady when they, at least, have not irresponsibly brought children into the world that they wouldn’t be even able to support. Aren’t we kindof “rewarding” irresponsibility by supporting irresponsible behavior? Will this perpetuate such further cycles of the same behavior, in the future? Why are single people, who have no-one, allowed to die of their conditions?
So, Democrats, I know you’d argue your point on a sinking ship and pop the inflatables, if others were to prove you wrong. You simply can’t admit ever being wrong, can you? Now you know what it means when you hear that some states haven’t expanded Medicaid. That means allowing single people to receive Medicaid, as well. The Federal government is trying to sweeten the pot towards further Socialism by dangling one-time subsidies to states which would initially assist them to cover all these additional people. Many states still hold out and won’t do so. I agree with that stance, even though I would personally benefit.
Young people may not understand that the government is not a fairy granting wishes with a magic wand. The government “budget” is money they are spending that they get from us, the American people. They take that money out of our paychecks, each and every check. They take it from home- and property owners via taxes they pay on these items. States collect it in sales taxes they impose (this can vary on the state). If you work for cash or pay someone in cash, taxes which might have been taken out may not be being taken, when they are supposed to have been. Employers use your social security number to show the wages and how much is withdrawn to pay your taxes. If you are not a citizen, whereby you would have received a social security number, you can still receive a different number, so that you can legally work and pay your taxes. If you have already illegally entered the country, and do not wish to be deported for doing so, then why would you get a number and make it easy for the government to find you and expel you? You wouldn’t. It’s a good bet that since you came in already breaking the laws, you likely might perpetuate being able to stay and working only at cash jobs and not paying taxes. Meanwhile, you’ll still benefit, with free education and healthcare, that the citizens have to cover by paying taxes. Now, I’m not against kids, or parents, and I’m certainly a compassionate person. But, where is the fairness? Can’t we still help people AND be fair? We are breaking our system, because the rules which we have in place to keep it operating are being flouted and ignored. There are too many free-loaders wanting freebies from less and less people creating wealth.
I’ve worked practically my whole life, except for some periods of unemployment. I’d work after school, and I’d work during the summer, even as a school-aged child. I may have lived with the immense privileges of what my parents bestowed through their own hard work and dedication, but nothing was handed to them. I greatly resent accusatory anti-Semitic slurs about wealthy Jews. We have worked hard against most odds and have succeeded. We didn’t enslave anybody to do so, and we were excluded by discrimination from jobs — we got around that and created our own, in addition to fighting for equal rights of all, paving the path for others behind us.
These last years have been a bear. I can’t find work and there are hardly any jobs to be found. I worked for over two years at a print shop, but suspended my employment there to be with my brother. He lived in Massachusetts — home of the pre-cursor to Obamacare, “Romneycare”. Cancer had eaten through his bones. He now had a hip replacement to give him “a leg to stand on”. About two weeks after learning of my brother’s diagnosis, my Mother learned she had breast cancer. She couldn’t be with us as she endured her own treatments. My brother passed away, about three months later. She missed it. I didn’t.
I only vaguely caught what President Obama said about whether we should really be throwing money toward old people, such as his Aunt Tillie, who needed a hip replacement or something with her leg or something, and that she eventually died, and why should we have done that at that point in her life and in her needs? I’m not quite sure what it was he said, but I only perked up my ears because of the similarities to my brother. He was advocating for Obamacare, and how just such a program would be so beneficial. He sure wasn’t thinking about preserving his Aunt Tillie’s life, with that idea — he was questioning the cost-benefit analysis of doing so!
I cannot tell you how infuriated it made me to hear him saying such things, when it seemed like he could be describing my own brother, in a state which subscribed to Romneycare. He sounds like Hitler, with that talk! My Father and his two brothers served in the armies of this country during World War II to keep our country free and so that we would not fall under Communism, Socialism, Fascism, or anything else that isn’t what our ideals uphold. I don’t want our loyalty to this country questioned when we declare our love for Israel and our right to live as free people in our homeland there, either. I can’t tell you, frankly, how glad I am that my Father flew 25 missions over Germany at the age of nineteen, living abroad throughout his service to this country, in harrowing ordeals with flak blowing holes through their planes, or losing engines, or what have you. I used to feel bad that we had to cause loss of life in order to preserve our ideals. We used major atomic bombs on our attackers in Japan. I am, and we probably always will, be very sad always that that had happened. But we won the war. Yeah, my Dad’s crew bombed the crap out of Hitler’s army. He was a noble gentleman, my Dad. He died from cancer at retirement age and didn’t get to see any benefit from the hard life he’d given to working and providing. I was in my mid-twenties. It was not easy for my Mother, and she has had to work all her life. She just quit work, in her early eighties, to help her significant other — a widowed man, also Jewish, who also was in the Mighty Eighth Air Force in a B-17.
Now, I think I have basal cell carcinoma. I haven’t been able to find work, so can’t get insurance that way. As already explained, my little work for a labor pool didn’t provide enough wages to cover insurance, so I’d been exempted. Long story short, I’m no longer there, either. I have to look around for a free clinic which might be able to get this off. I self-diagnosed based on similar photos from the internet.
I sincerely hope Trump becomes President. I want someone who can help bring jobs back to our economy so that I can have one, too. My food stamps in this circumstance have inexplicably been denied. I forgot to mention that although I had returned to my print job just one month after my brother passed away, I was only working part-time, while I drove my Mother to all her Doctor’s appointments for her cancer treatments. Meanwhile, I had helped the print shop and a friend who had just lost her job in the radio industry connect –she could use some work while she continued to seek work in the field she preferred, and they didn’t need to find somebody else (they told me to give them a call when I was ready to come back, anyways). When my Mother’s treatments were over (I had been staying there during the interim), my friend wouldn’t give up my job (she really hadn’t wanted to work there) unless I lived with her and paid her rent money! So, she instead wanted the money without having to do any work for it. I didn’t appreciate what I felt was blackmail, after I’d gotten her the darn job, so she won — she got to continue working to make her own money!
I lost. I gave up a very old friendship (but this was the final straw to a bunch of other such accumulated slights, over the years). I didn’t appreciate being kicked when I was already on the curb. And besides, the room I had been renting from an old boyfriend was supposedly going to be rented out, so I had nowhere to live when I was given one week to leave. I found a homeless shelter around the corner from my job at the print shop. I thought I could stay there at night while working during the day at the print shop. The shelter, though, didn’t let women leave during the day. The men got to leave, I guess because there were so many of them, that they just couldn’t contain them all. There were two or three other Jewish girls there, besides myself. One had a particularly difficult time, as she had a medical issue, and this situation was actually endangering her health. I left after a time because I was being “Jesused” by staff and a fill-in (guest staff). It receives state funds and that’s not really supposed to be happening like that. I received food stamps after that, and for quite awhile longer. There should be no reason, I feel, that I should not be still receiving them, when I have no job.
So, I don’t think our resources are equitably distributed either. I don’t see why millions of law-breaking immigrants should receive food stamps and free housing, when I’ve put in a number of working years and am left out in the cold. Four times or so at the labor pool I’ve had to stand up to anti-Semitic comments. It’s getting very bad out there with that. One time I told my boss about someone making anti-Semitic comments. He spoke to him privately. Five minutes later, he sent the guy to an assignment. I waited all day and never received an assignment. In fact, I hardly ever received assignments. I’d have to get up about 3:00 in the morning, ride my bike there and back (about 30-45 minutes, each way) (I have a valid license — safe driver, motorcycle, also — just can’t afford a vehicle; I also have an Israeli scooter license, but I think it’s expired, now) and sit there, day in and day out, and barely receive any work. Only when they started to let workers pick other workers for assignments was I then chosen. Do you think my obvious Jewish last name is preventing me from being hired when I submit resumes? I do, because so many people agree with the anti-Semitic Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions movement. Not against theocratic Iran, but against Democratic Israel.
Well, I’m not ready to say “Sayonara” just yet (wink, and acknowledgement to supporters/”friends”)! Neither should you be. You have 29 days before an election to change your party. I hope this opens your eyes to re-think what you have believed to be your reality.
News Notes 1 