Healthcare.fail

With a blame game playing out over whether the contractor or the Obama administration was behind the epic failure that is healthcare.gov, I think it’s important to get some perspective. There are a lot of bad companies in any industry. There are a lot of great companies, too. How good a company is at producing a good or service depends in part on the knowledge, skills, and creativity of its staff and leadership. But it also takes knowledge and experience to spot valuable partnerships, and businesses have risen and fallen on those choices.

So when the government, manned by a lot of people without special knowledge or understanding of anything besides winning elections and making speeches, says it will decide which company will provide a service to tens of millions of people and how the service should work, you really shouldn’t be surprised when what you get is a pile of crap.

Whatever happened to Mayberry?

RE: Police smell meth, raid home, kill 80-year-old, find no meth

Police corruption and police abuse is nothing new, but I've been hearing about an awful lot of this stormtrooper behavior going on lately.

First, I don't think police should be breaking into houses unless they suspect a violent crime is in progress. Invading a person's home puts everyone's life at risk. And secondly, by entering the home as burglars do, THEY - not the homeowner - have assumed the risk and the responsibility for the aftermath, whatever the law may currently say about it.

For the department to vindicate themselves because the son had marijuana in his room, and blame the victim for being shot and killed tells me it's the members of the sheriff's department who have more in common with criminals.

Wait, what's improving? Not my confidence in the media.

Re: Memo to the Tea Party: The Government's Budget is Actually Improving

So in the same paragraph that the author refers to the shutdown as a “poutfest” he admits that the gov’t budget has improved “partly” due to pressure from the Tea Party. Who deserves the rest of the credit? Not the President, who fought the sequester tooth and nail. Not the Democrats or establishment Republicans, who demonize Tea Party candidates for wanting to cut one cent from anything.

The author also makes a jab at “trigger-happy politicians” – I suppose he means people like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee? – as if “smart long-term fixes” haven’t been pitched time and time again (including a balanced budget amendment) and been shot down by the establishment. It’s delusional to believe that anyone other than the Tea Party or their representatives in Congress is interested in reigning in gov’t spending. And if people are really happy with the so called "cuts" we've seen so far, then it's no time to let up the pressure.

"Elections have consequences"

Some are fond of saying that “elections have consequences”, but this cuts both ways. Elections gave us Obamacare, but they also gave us a Republican House. The Republicans are doing exactly what they were voted in office to do, because they were elected as a response to Obamacare. They ARE doing their job: their job is not to represent the federal government, but to represent the interests and concerns of their constituents; their job is not to serve the administration and fund laws, but to ensure that the laws serve (and not harm) those they were sent to Washington to represent.

This "shutdown" is not the result of a few fringe Republicans hijacking the House, but of an American public divided on the purpose and scope of government. Our government is the product of the culture, so that any divisions in that government merely reflect those in the culture. A President of any leadership ability or self-awareness would have recognized this fact and rather than dismiss and villainize his political opponents (and along with them, every American they represent), would instead reopen debate and let rational persuasion – not edict – rule the day.