EXTRA: America squirms in hopes there’s some truth to Trump tweet

President Donald J. Trump felt compelled to use his Twitter account Tuesday to inform us he thinks the partisan sides in Congress eventually will reach agreement on something resembling a health care plan for the nation.

Of course, his talk of Democrats and Republicans “eventually coming together” on the issue is so vague that I can’t say it offers any sense of relief to people who actually relied on the Affordable Care Act in recent years to be able to have something resembling health insurance.

IT ALSO DOESN’T help assure people that Trump seems more concerned that the Affordable Care Act itself is undermined in ways that will prevent it from being able to succeed. Although I’m sure the unease his actions are causing isn’t much of a concern to Trump – he probably figures we didn’t vote for him anyway.

As one of the people who relied upon the program’s assistance to be able to cover a health care plan, the whole situation makes me uncertain just what my status is.

And it’s also put me in the situation that I’m sure many hundreds of thousands of people across Illinois will now share – don’t get sick!

So here’s my New Year’s resolution to act in ways to promote good health. Not only for my physical well-being, but because my wallet could wind up feeling more ill than my body.

  -30-

Who offends you says more about your sensibilities than what was said

I don’t doubt there are some people out there who are more bothered by Stephen Colbert these days than by Raul Labrador. Although if you’re one of them, I’d argue you are what is wrong with our society these days.
 

Who bothers you more -- Colbert ...

For those of you who don’t pay attention to details, Colbert is a late-night television host who last week made a wisecrack on-air – the one that says President Donald Trump’s mouth is only good for servicing Russian Premier Vladimir Putin in a sexual manner.

WHILE LABRADOR is the member of Congress who tried justifying his vote in favor of the Trump-desired American Health Care Act last week by calling it a “lie” that anybody dies because of a lack of medical treatment.

I’ll be the first to admit that Colbert phrased his thought in a particularly crude manner; one that probably would appeal to those whose mentality never advanced beyond the level of a 12-year-old when it comes to sexual issues.

But the people who want the Federal Communications Commission to crack down on Colbert for broadcasting profanity and perversion over the broadcast airwaves are just being ridiculous.

Colbert is guilty of the offense of telling a lame joke. Considering that he’s not a newscaster or commentator but an entertainer and comedian, that can be considered a “high crime and misdemeanor” of the celebrity world.

DING HIS LATE-NIGHT show a few ratings points, which will hurt the bottom line of how much money can be charged to advertisers whose spots air during his show. Anything more is overkill. Particularly since trying to censor him in any manner will only make him into a heroic figure for those people who think Donald Trump is a twit.

 

... or the Idahonian Labrador?

Considering that the whole Trump persona is based off a ridiculously pompous and absurd image, it is hard to believe that Trump himself would be bothered by this. He certainly has had more harsh criticism made about himself during his public life.

Or is it just that the particular image offered up by Colbert was a homosexual one? Whereas if people had implied Trump slept around with as many women as he could, THAT would be okay to the ideological right.

The people who voted for him despite the image that came out during the campaign last year of a guy who thinks it’s appropriate to reach out to women by literally REACHING OUT and grabbing them by their genitalia. While perhaps also planting a Tic-Tac-laced kiss on their lips without their consent?

 

PEREZ: Speaking the truth?!?

PERSONALLY, THIS WHOLE matter sounds less like reality and more like an old Beavis and Butthead sketch. Think about it?

BUTT-HEAD: “Heh, heh heh, heh heh, Beavis, you’re such a cock holster (the actual term Colbert used to describe Trump).”

BEAVIS: “Shut up, you butt-munch! Heh, heh heh, heh heh.”

I feel more stupid just for having written those lines. I’m sure you’d like to get back the seconds of time you took to read them. It’s all so trivial.

BY COMPARISON, THERE is that moment expressed Friday at a Town Hall forum by Labrador, who has served in Congress from Idaho since being elected in 2010. When questioned about how GOP ideas about health care reform would result in some losing medical treatment, Labrador tried to go on the defensive, but failed miserably.

Is our society now reduced to Trump's level...

“No one wants anybody to die, that lie is so indefensible,” he said, before moving on to the part that gained him national attention and probably will be the most memorable thing he’ll ever say in public life. “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

Actually, that’s exactly why some people will die if we try to make it so bureaucratically complicated for people to get treatment without putting themselves into life-defining debt. And if you argue they can just turn to hospital emergency rooms, keep in mind that such a circumstance is exactly the problem that would be resolved by reforming the way healthcare is paid for.

... or are we now Beavis & Butt-head

The man is just too clueless to comprehend what he’s talking about. Which bothers me more than Colbert or Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez, who in recent weeks has been criticized for using profane language when talking about the healthcare reform debate.

AS PEREZ PUT it during one Democratic rally last month, “I have a name for (Republican healthcare reform), it’s ‘I don’t care,’ because the Republican leadership doesn’t give a shit about those who are suffering.”

The sad thing is that Perez’ potty-mouthed talk may be the most honest comment we’ve heard about the issue, and that’s the intellectual level we’ve dropped to as a society.

One that the ultimate morons of the 1990s, Beavis and Butt-head themselves, could comprehend!

  -30-

What happens now that sanity has prevailed over Supreme Ct., society?

Back in the days a half-century ago, you knew you were passing through “nut country” when you started seeing the billboards reading “Impeach Earl Warren.”

Would you have wanted to receive this postcard in the mail?

Referring to the one-time chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who presided back in the days when many of the significant civil rights decisions were made.

IT WAS THE opinion of certain people in our society that the court should have been enforcing “the law” by striking all these actions down. Instead, the Warren-era court helped advance us out of the days when segregation was considered an “all-American” value of our society.

Those people are largely dead. By and large, it’s their grandchildren who are now the overly-vocal ideologues who are trying to perpetuate a certain vision of what the United States should be about.

And their vision took two highly-visible blows from the Supreme Court this week – the high court issued a final ruling that upholds the attempts by President Barack Obama to impose health insurance for all and strikes down a lower court ruling that tried to keep laws in place against gay couple from being legitimately married.

The end result is that gay couples can now not be denied a marriage license in places like Alabama and Mississippi. And the political people who will continue to strike down the Affordable Care Act that provides for subsidies to help people in need afford health insurance will have to admit it’s their own personal ideological hang-ups at work – and not any legitimate flaw in the law.

HOW LONG UNTIL we start getting the “Impeach John Roberts” billboards popping up in crackpot land?

ROBERTS: Will ideologues blame him?

Roberts is the Supreme Court justice appointed by a Republican president who was supposed to keep the high court’s rulings in tune with conservative ideologue desires, but wound up siding with health care reform because he saw how ideologically-motivated its opponents were.

To someone who is concerned about the letter of the law above all else, it makes sense to be scared off by ideology.

As far as gay marriage is concerned, Roberts was among the justices opposed to the idea. Although he wasn’t able to persuade a majority of the court to back him. To the ideologues, what good is being “chief justice” if you can’t strong-arm your colleagues into doing what you want?

SO THEY’RE BOUND to despise him. Even though the bulk of the country will wind up supporting him.

KENNEDY: 'Equal dignity'

Because both of these issues are ones of great importance to our society.

The lack of health insurance by people is a problem that hurts us all because the fact that the United States offers access to the best health care in the world doesn’t matter much if one can’t afford it. If those people wind up relying on emergency rooms for their health care, then being unable to pay the bill, the public will wind up paying.

As for gay marriage, I honestly feel it’s none of my business who someone else wants to marry. I don’t think it is anybody’s business what a couple does. Until the day comes when a man is forcibly married to another man (or woman to woman) against their will, this isn’t an issue for the law to be concerned with.

THE COURT WOUND up siding the way they did, despite the outspoken criticism of justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia – the latter of whom was once a professor of the same University of Chicago Law School that Obama was once an instructor at.

Scalia was particularly snotty in his written diatribe against the gay marriage ruling, saying the line of logic used to defend marriage, intimacy and spirituality as Constitutionally-protected rights is at about the level of “a fortune cookie.”

As opposed to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the opinion that supported gay marriage, saying the fact that gay couples wanted to be able to marry was actually the utmost respect for the concept that they wanted to share in.

“Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions,” Kennedy wrote. “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

SCALIA: Will ideology die with him?

WHAT I SUSPECT truly bothers Scalia and his ilk is the notion that they were appointed by ideologically-motivated presidents whose intent was to create a conservative tilt to the high court that would long outlive them. Perhaps Scalia thought his ideological leanings would outlive him and become a permanent part of our society.

Instead, it seems the court would rather follow the law than his ideology that won’t even outlast his term on the Supreme Court, and he and his followers will be the ones “condemned to live in loneliness” that they ultimately imposed on themselves.

  -30-

High court to get chances to satisfy ideologues, or do the right thing

I’m sure the ideologues of our society are drooling at the bit, on account of the chance that the conservative wing of the Supreme Court of the United States will have a chance in coming months to turn back a pair of issues they detest.

The issues being the legitimacy of the Affordable Care Act, and whether gay couples ought to be able to marry just like others in our society.

THE LATTER ISSUE got put into circumstances last week that will force the Supreme Court to address the issue – despite their desire expressed in recent months to avoid having to take a stance.

While the Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear the case involving a challenge to the subsidies that make it possible to provide health insurance to people at a cost they can afford.

         

Before I go further, I should point out that I am amongst the people who have health insurance these days because of the federal initiative that is the key point of President Barack Obama’s legacy. Being a freelance writer means I work for no one specifically who is willing to provide me a health insurance policy as a benefit.

I qualify for a tax break that covers about 40 percent of the cost of my health insurance policy. The rest of the cost comes out of my own pocket.

YET THE SUBSIDIES that allow for me to receive a financial break on buying my own health insurance are the subject of a lawsuit. The federal Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Va., has ruled they are legitimate. Which has critics of health care reform taking their matter to the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

That same court has previously ruled that the general concept of Obama’s health care reform initiative is constitutional. But they also have issued rulings that have restricted it.

The opponents of making health insurance more readily accessible would love it if they could knock down the subsidies, because it is the same basic strategy that people who oppose the idea of abortion being a legitimate medical procedure use in their political fights.

They push for so many restrictions on abortion that, for all practical purposes, it becomes next to impossible for many women to obtain. Which is why that referendum question last week in Illinois about whether insurance policies ought to include coverage for abortion – and the overwhelming “yes” vote – is significant.

IF THE IDEOLOGUES could make it too expensive for many to get health insurance, that certainly would go a long way toward disabling the Affordable Care Act. It would become a toothless beast.

We’ll have to see if Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., once again sides with the less conservative members of the high court, who he thought back in 2012 were too inclined to reject health care reform solely on ideological grounds.

It also will be interesting to see what happens with regards to the concept of gay marriage – which last week had the federal Court of Appeals based in Cincinnati overturn lower court rulings that would have upheld the concept in Michigan and Ohio, along with Kentucky and Tennessee.

We in Chicago are part of a different federal court district – one that has supported the gay marriage concept. We in Illinois also have a Legislature and governor who have signed the change into our law.

BUT IT MEANS this is now officially an issue where the nation becomes a checkerboard of policies – even though the dividing line between support and hostility toward gay marriage no longer is State Line Road between the East Side neighborhood and Hammond, Ind., but now is Michigan City, Ind., and the land to the north.

The high court earlier this autumn went counter to what legal experts expected and decided to ignore the issue. I suspected then the high court’s ideologues did not want to be in a position of having to legitimize the marriage concept, so they chose to do nothing.

Instead, the appeals court created a difference, and now the nation’s high court is going to have to figure out the consistency in policy for the United States as a whole. This clearly is not a “state” issue, even though the ideologues would like it to be because the “checkerboard” concept would add all the more confusion to the matter.

Which means the Supreme Court will have to be called upon in a pair of issues to ultimately decide the same thing – whether to clarify, or further confuse, the populace of our society.

  -30-

More of us now have health insurance. That ought to be the ACA bottom-line!

We’re in the final days during which people can take advantage of the Affordable Care Act to try to sign themselves up for a health insurance policy, so as to guarantee that they are in compliance with federal laws requiring them to have some form of medical coverage.

OBAMA: Blame? Or praise!

The ACA that is a key part of Barack Obama’s desire for a presidential legacy requires people to be signed up for a health insurance policy by Monday – although the ones who literally waited until this final weekend before  trying to sign up will not have policies take effect until May 1.

OF COURSE, THE focus that some political people want to put on this is all negative. Either because they don’t want Obama to have anything in the way of public policy he could claim as a success.

Or because they really are clueless enough to believe that all those millions of people in this country who were going without health insurance were doing so because they chose to do so – and NOT because the insurance bureaucracy was such a mess that it was too complicated for many to get insurance.

Yes, the truth is that there are those people who would prefer to ignore the problem of so many millions going without insurance when they get sick – ignoring the fact that they wind up becoming a burden that the rest of us wind up having to pay for.

So when I read the reports indicating that some 6 million people who previously had no health insurance now have something resembling an insurance policy for when they become ill, I can’t help but be impressed.

THAT NUMBER MAY well be responsible for the assorted polls of recent weeks that show the total number of people opposed to Obama’s health care reform measures is on the decline (a Kaiser Foundation poll showed the gap between those who hate the idea and those who back it falling from 16 percent to 8 percent in the past two months).

Although the years of rancid rhetoric about the issue by Republican political operatives interested in doing the bidding of conservative ideologues have taken a toll.

Will this sign someday be as despicable ...

There are still many people who want to believe it is a sordid, un-American plot at stake to try to get insurance coverage for people so that a hospital stay when they become seriously ill does not bankrupt them.

Yes, we all heard those stories back in November during the early days of the sign-up period when there were assorted computer glitches that complicated the process.

AS A PERSON who was lacking a valid health insurance policy (in recent years, I've worked for companies that didn't want to provide such a benefit to me), I found that when I finally got around to using the websites put together by Illinois government officials to guide people through the process, they seemed to work very well.

... as this leaflet?

It took me about 45 minutes in all, but when I was completed I received notice that I was signed up for an insurance policy (and even got help in covering about 40 percent of its monthly cost).

I’m sure it helps that I knew off the top of my head all of the personal data that I had to provide, and that I don’t have any pre-existing medical conditions (at least none that I’m aware of). But it worked.

I will feel sorry, however, for those people who waited until the final days (literally, this weekend and Monday) to try to sign up. They may create a backlog on the Internet that causes some delays.

ALTHOUGH HOW SORRY should we feel for someone who waited for months before finally trying to do something? I don’t think we feel much compassion for someone who tries to file their income tax returns on April 16?

So what is going to become of this issue?

I know fully well there are Republican political operatives who are not only convinced, but also are counting on, displeasure among people with health care reform to cause so much anger against Obama that they take it out on him by voting for Republican political people for Congress.

There are those who tell you they are sure the GOP will regain control of the Senate and keep the House of Representatives – which would create such a hostile environment for Obama’s last two years as president. They WILL vote to repeal health care reform – forcing Obama to have to veto their effort in order to maintain it.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS if, despite all their years of griping, it winds up that people with insurance now no longer encounter problems when they become ill. What happens if the rancid rhetoric turns out to be cheap talk?!

I’m sure some will continue to let their partisanship get the best of them. But as for the real majority of our society, maybe this becomes a non-issue.

And the fact that some people were so desperately determined to oppose the idea of people having health insurance will become yet another point that they, and their descendants, wind up having to apologize for in future decades.

  -30-

EXTRA: Obama gives U.S. extension

President Barack Obama behaved Monday like the one-time college instructor that he once was – he gave the nation a day-long extension to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act to avoid Internal Revenue Service penalties.

Originally as crafted, the health care reform measure that is meant to give Obama his political legacy had a deadline of Monday.

ANYBODY WHO DIDN’T have a health insurance policy in place by now would face financial penalties when they file their tax returns come April 15. Not that they can’t still sign up for health insurance.

The deadline for that is the end of March. It’s just a matter of how much the IRS will ding them, and how quickly the new health insurance policy will actually take effect.

But Obama on Monday said he’s extending the deadline a day. People now have until the end of Christmas Eve in order to get themselves signed up AND make the initial payment. It makes me wonder how lenient he was with deadlines for students back when he was a University of Chicago Law School instructor.

Such leniency is still to be needed, even though federal officials say some 1 million people have used the health care reform provisions to get themselves some form of medical coverage for future incidents when they become ill.

THAT OUGHT TO be the focus of this particular issue – since those people who get hit with medical conditions that require even a short hospital stay can get a double-whammy of an unpayable bill that can drag them down financially.

And that winds up placing even more hits on an economy that may technically be improving, but for which there are still many people who haven’t yet felt a boost.

  -30-

How many will miss Monday deadline?

Monday is the deadline by which those of us who haven’t been able to afford adequate health insurance were supposed to use the benefits of a new federal law and sign up for coverage.

Some will get hit w/ penalties for lack of coverage

Of course, there are many of us (myself included) who have failed to meet the deadline – people must have signed up for a plan and made the initial payment by Monday – in order to have coverage come Jan. 1 AND avoid a potential penalty from the Internal Revenue Service when we fill out our income tax returns for 2013.

NOT THAT WE’VE failed to comply with the Affordable Care Act, which allows people to keep using either the federal website or the websites created by various states through March 31 in order to sign up with an insurance company for coverage.

In all likelihood, I will deal with this issue for myself (as a freelance writer, I don’t have anybody offering me an insurance policy as a benefit – even though the entities I do work for expect me at times to perform labor similar to that done by a full-time employee) in coming weeks.

As I suspect many others will do.

President Barack Obama said last week that in California alone, some 15,000 people per day are signing up for insurance coverage. And that some 2 million people will have health insurance Jan. 1 that would not have had it otherwise.

OF COURSE, THE fact that there were glitches in the process for signing up when it began Nov. 1 (and that political people with ideological hang-ups about the idea that all people ought to have some health care coverage were more than willing to enhance the confusion) means that many people still have not been able to get around to dealing with the issue.

Actually, I wonder how much of a rush there will be come Monday from people who hope to avoid those IRS penalties (I’m not sure exactly what they will be) by signing up AND making the initial payment.

Which will all have to be done by the end of business Monday. It could mean a rush of people similar to the mess we get every April 15 for people determined to get their tax returns filed on time to avoid penalties.

OBAMA: Easing 'frustration" in Hawaii

It also makes me think that many people will get frustrated because they will fall short and miss the Monday deadline.

IF I WERE a conspiracy-theorist type of person, I’d wonder if the IRS was determined to have people fail to meet the deadline. Because then there are penalties that will be charged to people that I’m sure some officials already are counting as revenue for the federal government.

As much as I hate the thought of having to pay the penalty, I’m accepting the fact that it will be much less stressful for me now to just deal with it come April.

Which is why I’m not going anywhere near the Illinois website for signing up for health coverage on Monday.

Obama last week said health care website problems were “a source of great frustration.” Of course, he made this comment just before he and the first family took off for their annual Hawaii holiday vacation.

WHILE THOSE OF us remaining in Chicago cope with the wet and snowy weather conditions that hit much of the nation this weekend and threaten to give us not so much a “white” Christmas as a wet-and-sloppy one!

Hoping and wishing that I can resolve my insurance situation sometime during the week between Christmas and the New Year holidays is my goal – one boosted in particular by the fact that for a freelance writer, this is usually the dead week where I struggle to cough up copy that someone will actually pay money for.

  -30-

Supreme Court won’t play along with ideologue games on healthcare reform

Call it a plus that the Supreme Court of the United States isn’t interested in playing along with the political games that the conservative ideologues of our society want to engage in to try to strike down health care reform.

The justices who wouldn't hear the arguments about whether larger companies should offer health insurance will still consider whether views about abortion should be an issue. Photograph by Supreme Court of the United States

 

The nation’s high court, of course, upheld the basic concept of the Affordable Care Act – the measure that is meant to give people in this country access to health insurance AND give Barack Obama a lasting presidential legacy.

TO THE IDEOLOGUES who are particularly resentful that their constant, hostile opposition to Obama wasn’t enough to defeat him in 2008 or 2012, the latter is enough reason to oppose health care reform.

Although I also realize there is a segment of the conservative element of our society that really wants to believe it’s not “their” problem that some people can’t get medical coverage.

No matter how much the cost of dealing with such people when they become ill hits us as a society as a whole (somebody has to cover the cost of those “emergency room” visits for minor medical matters), they’d rather ignore it.

They seem to follow the same line of logic they follow with any form of public assistance – it is money wasted on people who are undeserving.

THE CALLOUSNESS OF such thought is why I have been a backer of health care reform measures. Somebody has to address the problem, and even if one wants to argue that Obama’s attempts aren’t thorough enough, it is more of a solution than what the opposition has offered up.

OBAMA: Benefits society & his legacy

It is because of that thought that I was pleased to learn of the fact that the Supreme Court decided Monday to do nothing! Specifically with request to the lawsuit that Liberty University in Virginia that wants to knock down the Affordable Care Act on the grounds that it requires companies with 50 or more employees to provide basic insurance.

Liberty wanted the Supreme Court to take on this portion of the case immediately – without requiring it to go through lower-level appeals courts. The high court chose not to.

Part of why I’m pleased is that the reality of our society these days is that many companies want to view the benefit of a health insurance policy for their workers as some sort of undue hardship on themselves.

YES, THEY PROBABLY could have a better financial bottom line if they didn’t have to deal with the issue. Although from the worker’s perspective, the major selling point of a full-time job often is the health insurance benefits one can receive.

Because without it, one serious illness can be devastating financially. A hospital stay of as little as a single weekend can easily run up a $10,000 tab. How many people really have enough money stashed around that they could cover such an expense – if they were hit with it suddenly?

So seeing that the court isn’t about to mess with the idea that people are working for an insurance benefit just as much as a salary is a good thing. Anything else would have me wondering how deeply the high court was in bed with ideologue interests.

Perhaps we can now start moving forward on this issue – particularly since the claims are now that the problems that existed for people interested in signing up for insurance benefits through Affordable Care Act provisions have been worked out.

I’M SURE THE ideologues will want to forevermore believe the flaws exist and will want to tell scare stories in hopes that people don’t sign up.

But this has become a case where we ought to ignore the ideologues – perhaps give them a great big “Shut Up!” from the true masses of our society.

This can't be our health care for the poor!

Besides, the ideologues are still fighting it out over health care reform. They object to the idea that insurance benefits obtained through the program would include coverage for contraceptives – even from companies operated by people who want to impose their own religious thoughts on abortion onto everyone else!

The courts, which have been sympathetic to that line of logic in the past, is scheduled to consider the issue come spring. This fight ain’t over yet!

  -30-

Are those ideologues complaining about clogged healthcare websites part of the reason they’re clogged?

As someone who is self-employed, has experienced a lack of health insurance, and who will now have to use the procedures established by the Affordable Care Act, I am among those with a personal interest in all the stories that have emanated about how the websites meant to guide us through the process of gaining a health insurance policy are ridiculously flawed.

We'll be making a return trip when it's less crowded.

 

It’s slow. It's confusing. In some cases, people who spend significant amounts of time working their way through the process wind up being told they can’t get any information now and will have to try again later.

NONE OF THIS surprises me. Technological glitches are always likely to cause problems, particularly in the early days of something.

So while I took a quick look last week on Tuesday at the website (http://getcoveredillinois.gov/) created by Illinois state government, I didn’t really try to get any information or start the process on my behalf.

For one thing, the process that we’re in now in which we’re supposed to sign up for a health care plan will last six months. I do not plan to be one of those people desperately trying to find something in the final days of March 2014.

But I also realize that there is time – particularly since the policies that people wind up getting for themselves through the Affordable Care Act will not take effect until January 1.

I PROBABLY WILL be one of those individuals who waits a few weeks before trying to figure out what exactly my situation will be.

Maybe I’ll be the guy who’s filling out my applications while kids come a-knockin’ on my front door come Halloween! Or maybe I’ll find some early November day when I happen to be up ridiculously late.

Perhaps an application filed around 3 a.m. some day will come at a time when there won’t be so many people (relatively speaking) trying to get on the computer at once.

Also, I figure by then, things will start settling down. There won’t be the initial rush of people that always causes computer programs to crash (just remember how ridiculous it was to call up anything on the Internet in the morning and early afternoon hours of Sept. 11, 2001).

I SUSPECT THAT by showing some patience, I can avoid many of the problems. I also suspect that many people who are going to be in need of the federal government’s health care reform initiatives will do the same.

Now I don’t doubt that people who tried to get a head start on their applications last week experienced confusion.

A part of the reason I didn’t even try to do an application Tuesday was that I could see for myself that this has the potential to be a time-consuming process. And I detest anything that requires me to both mindlessly sit in front of a computer screen while also requiring me to provide sensitive (and personal) information.

That is a dangerous combination that could cause me to inadvertently do myself in!

ONE THING DOES bother me about the assorted bits of coverage that tried telling us how flawed the application was thus far. Many people claiming to be reporter-types (I suspect they’re more ideological blowhards – even the ones I know personally and sort of think of as being friends) went through the process to give a “first-hand” account of how mucked-up things were.

I wonder how much those ideologues wound up adding to the clutter – causing people who seriously need help in obtaining some form of health insurance to have troubles.

And considering how they were determined to write commentaries trashing the process, I’d question the legitimacy of anything they had to “report.”

They’re the ones who have been trashing health care reform initiatives for years, while also trying to justify the inactivity this past week of certain federal government agencies and programs by calling them a “slimdown.”

ALL THE WHILE ignoring the fact that so many people in our society lacking in health insurance does cause a serious drag on our society’s overall economy. It is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

While some people are acting these days as though they merely want to add to the cheap rhetoric that ensures nothing gets done!

  -30-

Everything takes its sweet ol’ time in world of Ill. government operations

In a quarter-century of watching up-close government in operation, the lasting impression I have gained is that nothing is done in a timely fashion.

Relying on government agencies for something (regardless of what level the agency in question is at) ensures you will ultimately get the benefit in question. As far as how quickly, it will come whenever it comes.

PEOPLE WHO ARE capable of doing things on deadline (such as myself) are often the most frustrated with the endless delays – some of which were due to bureaucratic bumbling while others were due to politically-partisan delays.

Sometimes, people who desperately oppose something count delays in its implementation as being a political victory.

Take the whole matter of health care reform – which is in law and which in theory should start showing benefits next year. But Republicans in the House of Representatives (at least the most ideologically-motivated ones) are engaging in any actions they can to cause delays.

Although their blatantly-partisan efforts will be aided by those efforts by the state governments that will encounter their own delays in helping people enroll in the efforts meant to provide some form of health insurance coverage for all.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS reported this weekend that while Illinois expects to eventually have 1,200 workers in place to help people with questions as they decide exactly what health coverage plan best suits their needs, there are only about 100 such workers currently in place who are fully certified.

Considering that the six-month period in which people have to get themselves some sort of health insurance begins Tuesday, it would appear obvious that many people will have to figure out things on their own.

Perhaps the state figures that many of us are inherently procrastinators, and that the need for all those people trained and certified to help on this issue will not be needed until later in the process – perhaps around March when the sign-up period is coming to an end.

Will we get an ugly rush of people by the end of March seeking health insurance; similar to the ugly rush we get every year around April 15 when the masses decide to finally break down and file their income tax returns?

OR WILL THERE be early applicants who will become so frustrated with the lack of help that some may wind up erroneously deciding that those Republican ideologues may have been on to something with all their rhetoric about how health care reform was some sort of messed-up scam?

All I can say at this point is that I hope people are patient as they work their way through the intricacies of GetCoveredIllinois.gov – the site that people are supposed to use to sign up for help with health insurance.

But health insurance isn’t the only issue where the state is lagging behind in offering help. Take “concealed carry,” the matter of people being allowed to carry a pistol on their person in public for self-defense.

People wishing to have their firearm holstered (or tucked away in a purse or duffle bag) will have to gain permits from the Illinois State Police, who will require them to complete 16 hours of training from state-approved instructors. The process for applying to take such training will begin Jan 5.

BUT IT SEEMS that thus far, the state police only have 54 instructors approved to offer such training – and most of them are in the more urban six-counties of the Chicago metro area.

Some downstate Illinois counties don’t have any instructor yet, and it’s not clear when they will.

I’m sure from the perspective of the people who wanted to start carrying a pistol in a shoulder-holster the very day that the General Assembly overrode Gov. Pat Quinn’s amendatory veto of the issue, this is an unconscionable delay. Plus the fact that they won’t be able to go to a local office and may have to make a trip to a distant county to get the permit is scandalous to them!

I’m not as offended by that concept, because I realize it can take time to get people into place – just as it will take time to get all those workers certified to help people gain health insurance.

I ONLY HOPE that the delays for both of those groups of people can be resolved in a timely manner – and not with one significantly taking longer to fix than the other.

Because I’d hate to think that sometime in the near future, someone who could not get some sort of health insurance coverage would wind up dying from gunshot wounds inflicted by someone who was too quick on the draw because they thought their personal safety was being threatened!

  -30-

Boehner ain’t no “Fast Eddie,” who wouldn’t have apologized for actions

I’ve always thought of the opposition to the Barack Obama presidency as being a national equivalent of the “Council Wars” of old.

BOEHNER: Fast Eddie wouldn't apologize

The Republican opposition that wants to oppose everything on ideological grounds (they don’t want Obama having any accomplishments to claim, and would impeach him in an instant if they could come up with anything resembling grounds to do so) looks, and sounds, a lot like the Vrdolyak 29 of old.

THAT MAJORITY IN the City Council in the mid-1980s, after all, was willing to create some short-term harm in city government if it meant taking down Harold Washington as mayor.

A lot like the way the ideologue Republicans in Congress, particularly the House of Representatives majority, plans to vote on Friday for a measure that continues to fund the federal government ONLY IF it also includes measures that dump all over the Obama version of health care reform!

It comes across as cheap and petty and whiny and obnoxious and short-sighted and harmful an act as anything that the City Council did when it had a majority opposition leadership of Edward R. Vrdolyak.

Except, …

I COULDN’T HELP but be astounded at the news coverage this week when House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, let it be known he was going to let the ideologue-minded segment of his caucus dominate this issue.

There was speculation early on that Boehner might try to keep federal government working without turning the whole affair into a politically partisan battle.

Envision a similar Obama/Boehner moment

Instead, Boehner is letting his caucus tell him what to do, and he is trying to make it appear as though he has little to no choice in the matter (although it should be noted that some of the members of Congress in his caucus have hinted they would be more than willing to dump Boehner as House speaker if he DIDN’T go along with them on this issue).

“The key to any leadership job is to listen,” Boehner told the New York Times.

WHAT A WIMP!?!!

The “Fast Eddie” of old would never have tried to sound apologetic for an action that was openly hostile to the interests of Mayor Harold Washington. Even if he disagreed with the actions of his allied aldermen, he’d try to make it appear as though it was the aldermen who were following his lead.

Heck, they probably would be following his lead. For it was Vrdolyak who came to the realization that he could get away with open defiance of Washington because of the number of people who didn’t want to perceive it as any kind of historic moment that Chicago had elected its first African-American as mayor.

Just as there are some amongst us who resent the idea that it’s at all special that Obama was chosen as president in the 2008 election cycle, and that their most hostile mood didn’t sway the true majority of the electorate in 2012.

I’M NOT ABOUT to predict how this particular Congressional mess will play out. It won’t surprise me if they manage to create a procedural mess that impacts the federal government operations in some form.

Although I suspect the only people who will look upon this approvingly will be the individuals who live in those isolated congressional districts that actually elect these yahoos and put them in positions where they can impact all of us!

A part of me wonders if actions like this will wind up backfiring upon the GOP desires for increased control of the federal government because it will make many of us appalled enough to want to have leadership that can contain their harmful desires.

OBAMA: Does he compare to Harold?

In short, we’ll get tired of these political tactics – just as we eventually tired of “Council Wars” and future elections ate away at the “29,” turning it into an aldermanic minority.

I EVEN WONDER if these people in Washington could have an impact upon our state government election cycle in 2014.

I know Republicans are counting on the fact that the apathy surrounding Pat Quinn at the top of the Democratic ticket will be a drag on all Dems. But will enough of these ideological acts in Washington be enough to scare the Democrat-leaning Chicago-area voters into turning out in such large numbers for state elections that GOP candidates wind up losing anyway?

Not that I expect anyone in Congress to engage in last-minute reflection upon their actions before they take a Friday vote. Because, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the Washington Post, “Bipartisanship is a thing of the past. Now, all we do is ‘gotcha’ legislation.”

That’s why little gets done by our government. And history will wind up recording our current era as being especially touched upside the head by the stupid stick, just like we now remember much of the nonsense that occurred in the City Council some three decades ago.

  -30-