I am a left coast Marin county libertarian. I drive a pickup. I own guns and my own bowling ball. I support NPR, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the NRA. I have no patience for religion, but wish everyone would act more Christian.
There are many things about the modern governmental welfare state that I despise. Chief among them is the collective blind eye turned toward any sort of fiscal sustainability. Left, Right, and center, everybody pretends that their pet project is so abjectly worthy of everybody else's money that it should be held sacrosanct, never subject to the vagaries of economic ebb and flow. Whether that be the F-22, ethanol subsidies, or Wisconsin union pensions, everyone seems to think that the "hand in the cookie jar" model of governance is A-OK. When it comes to Medicare, I've always had a bad taste in my mouth about it. Until today.
Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to discard Medicare in favor of direct payments to insurance companies may be the most blatant, ridiculous, bald faced corporate welfare case I've ever heard of. I'm no fan of turning my paycheck into someone else's healthcare, but I'm even less enthused about turning it into (yet more obscene, unregulated, backdoor) profits for the insurance industry. I had (vainly) hoped that a new generation of teabag inspired politicians were actually trying to balance our collective checkbook, rather than beat the ideological horse a bit further. Foolish me, I thought that maybe, some cool heads would prevail and we would arrive at the acceptable balance of taxes and cuts that would put us in the black for the long term.
Ha ha! Just kidding! The actual plan, apparently, is to sell MORE unpayable bonds to the Chinese government, and use the cash to line the pockets of insurance Co. shareholders. After all, money NOW buys Gulfstream jets, while money paid to the ChiComs in 20 years just costs some redneck's kids the ability to go to college.
Hey wait a minute...I'm that redneck...those kids are my 6 and 2 year old sons!
Somebody please, please, please put a stop to this fucking nonsense.