Thursday, August 27, 2009

Health For Sale

This column is too controversial for some readers. Last week I compared President Obama’s 1,000 plus page proposal for our nation’s health care to a clogged freeway with no exits. I still like that analogy, but naturally everyone does not agree with me. After the column appeared in the paper someone suggested to me that my opinion, now made public, was biased because of my occupation. They had even written a letter about it.

This person told me that because I am an insurance agent I never should have written about the government’s attempted takeover of our health care system – or at the very least, I should have mentioned what I do for a living.

I like the English language – both spoken and written. I try to never be misunderstood, just ask my family and friends. I am certain that I drive them crazy as I constantly seek the right word, and all too often suggest a better word for my conversation partner. I will seek clarity to the point of annoyance. Welcome to my strange little world. But last week I may have failed in that area. It wasn’t what I wrote in my column, it’s what I didn’t.

I should have disclosed that people can purchase health insurance from me. This is my fortieth column (counting the twelve that appeared in the “Minneapolis Star-Tribune), and I’m pretty sure that this is the first time that I have mentioned how I make my living. That has been by design. Newspapers have advertising departments and this column is not ad space – so I have chosen not to take advantage of my editor’s good graces by selling my wares in these six-hundred words. I will not change that. Nor am I likely to change my perspective – but know this for sure: this column will never be a place to protect my personal interests by promoting a position in which I seek to pad my pockets.

But I wondered – have some of my past columns been tainted by my own dark secrets? It’s time to come clean. A couple years ago the “Minneapolis Star-Tribune” ran my column on the shameful way people litter. Well, to be perfectly honest I have littered myself. Occasionally I will spit my gum out the window of my truck – but only in unpopulated areas when no one is looking. I’m trying to quit.

Once or twice in this space I have expressed my displeasure with the way smokers are being treated as second-class citizens. I don’t smoke, but I do keep a box of candy cigarettes in my desk for fun – so I guess in a way I was being biased. Sorry.

My column about turning fifty years old was just a thinly veiled attempt to get more birthday cards. I’m embarrassed to tell you that it didn’t work. My story about the mythical man in the icehouse is the first part in a book series I am planning: Jerry and the mystery of the vending machines.

When I wrote about the Scott County Fair a few weeks ago I didn’t mention that my wife enters a lot of stuff (baked goods and vegetables) in the fair. I guess this could be perceived as promoting her seasonal hobby. I’ll be more careful next year (the fair, just outside of Jordan, is usually held the 4th weekend in July – watch this space).

I understand that there are three things you are never supposed to talk about because they are too controversial. I have covered politics; next I may tackle religion – but the third one? No thanks.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Road With No Exit

The other day I was about to get on Interstate Highway 94, but instead of a fast-moving freeway I saw two-lanes of cars sitting motionless all the way to the horizon. Because I refuse to voluntarily submit to captivity on a road that isn’t advancing and offers no options for an exit, I pulled over and stopped.

I knew this particular stretch of highway well. It was the route I took back and forth to college when I was learning how to change the world. The next exit was too far up the road to hope for another opportunity to get off anytime soon.

I could follow the other sheep to slaughter where I would sit on the highway going nowhere for hours, or I could back down the entrance ramp and look for another way home. My wife, being the law-abiding type, strongly voiced her opposition to my exit plan. I like to comply with her requests when I can. I don’t advocate breaking the law –including traffic laws, but to add my vehicle to a monstrous traffic jam would have been irresponsible.

When I got off the ramp I noticed cars and trucks were leaving the highway in a slow parade and were now exiting the entrance ramp – kind of like walking down an escalator that is going up. I was pleased to see that others were also not content to just sit there, but instead chose to try and improve their situation. We may still have enough rebels in this country after all.

So after I got off the ramp I got on a beautiful back country road and headed in the general direction of home. We drove through several forgotten little towns with their distinctive identities; one had an old flour mill sitting serenely by a small river. We could even roll down the windows and enjoy the summer day without being blown apart by 75 mph winds.

It’s nice to have options: The option of what road to take, where to live, work, worship and how to control your own health care. But the freedom of choosing your own health care is under attack.

President Obama has been pushing very hard to get our country to adopt his public option for government run health care, that if enacted would eventually eliminate all other options. The proposal, over 1,000 pages long, is filled with rules and regulations concerning you and your family and how the government will wrest more control of your own lives.

I understand that the current way we pay for our health care is flawed – but let’s not reinvent the wheel just because the tire is flat. But when I see the pressure, the coercion behind this rush to take over our nation’s health care I keep coming back to the same question: Why? Why is there so much effort being extended to take over one-sixth of our economy? I believe it is because the government wants more power and control over our lives.

Try to exit that road once you’re on it. It would be slow, crowded, poorly maintained and stacked with toll-booths. Our health care would only go one-way – just like an interstate.

Within the past few days President Obama seems ready to temporarily shelve his idea of government-run health insurance. It appears that the voice of the American people may be making a difference. I guess enough people finally said “no you can’t,” and got off the Obama highway.

No one wants to voluntarily submit to captivity on a road that isn’t advancing and offers no options for an exit.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Ice Man

It’s a hot August night, so I put on some Neil Diamond and grab a drink. I usually won’t add ice to a drink. I like to let the temperature of the drink stand on its own – no need in trying to affect change just to suit me. If it is served right out of the box or bottle – well so be it. It may be a lazy choice, or it might be due to a childhood experience that has stayed with me.

I grew up in a neighborhood where fun and adventure was always available. There were abandoned brewery caves, horses corralled next door, a farm down the street, vacant lots, a tired-out gravel pit, a livestock sales barn, the river, an empty church with a full cemetery, highways and alleys, 106 kids and Hespy’s.

Hespy’s was a gas station on the corner of two busy streets. There were usually two uniformed men working there – Hespy, the owner, (a shortened version of his last name), and his faithful mechanic – Vern, I think. They proudly pumped Texaco brand gasoline.

Our lawn mower ran exclusively on Texaco gas. When the need arose I would grab the red one-gallon metal can marked gasoline and bike down to Hespy’s. Because it was a full-service gas station, Vern or Hespy himself would fill the can and take the 35 cents. While they did that I would check out the candy machine.

They had the best candy machine in town. For a nickel you could buy a candy bar the size of your arm. The machine was tall with a big dial on the side to rotate the display. Once your selection was brought into the right spot, you pulled the knob to release the sugary goodness. I would ride home with one hand holding the full gas can, the other hand maneuvering the bike, and my mouth full of candy.

But the single most vivid memory of Hespy’s involved the icehouse. Behind the gas station was an icehouse where you could buy ice in two different sizes: the block and the bag. Other than for ice-carving I still don’t fully understand the need for a block of ice.

As little boys my brother Dan and I would often go along with Dad to get ice. The short trip chilled us with fear and foreboding as Dad would fire our imaginations with stories of the little man that lived in the icehouse. If you gave him enough money he would give you some of his ice.

A vision of a Rumpelstiltskin-type character inhabiting the icehouse was usually more than enough to keep the two of us away. But one time we had worked up enough courage to seek a little adventure and see if this was just another of Dad’s stories.

We rode our bikes over to Hespy’s and slowly approached the icehouse. In addition to the smaller door where the ice was delivered there was a larger door – which we guessed was how the iceman got in and out.

Dan knocked on the door to test the truth of Dad’s story. We stood there for only a few seconds before the door slowly started to open. That was the only proof we needed – the iceman was coming. We screamed, jumped on our bikes and pedaled for our lives.

I don’t know who opened that door forty years ago. My friend Mark likes to remind me that “ice is life’s least expensive luxury.” But whenever I am offered ice for my drink I feel a familiar chill run down my back.

“No thanks,” I say.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Cash for Clunkers

I like to start my day with a cup of coffee, and if my wife Rhonda is hanging around the kitchen, I am also offered a tall glass of tomato juice. I don’t really like tomato juice, but I drink it because my wife poured it for me, even if it causes me to shudder and shiver as I swallow it.

I get the same convulsive reaction when I try to swallow the economic elixirs sold by modern day snake-oil salesman dressed up as politicians. They travel from town to town where they put on their town-hall meetings. There they promote their products which promise to cure everything from hair-loss to job-loss, recession to depression, and stomach gas to greenhouse gas.

The Cash for Clunkers program is our federal government’s latest con in their attempt to get us to voluntarily transform our country. For the last couple weeks I have been scrutinizing my vehicles. Within my stable of V-8s I think I may have a clunker or two. That is of course if I am to embrace the government’s new definition – which of course I will not. A vehicle with a model year of 1984 or newer which gets 18 miles per gallon or less is now considered a clunker by our federal government. They want to get these large, safe family-sized vehicles off the road – and they will take your money to do it.

I know people who have taken advantage of this new plan – I don’t blame them. But let’s consider the future consequences of this program. When a vehicle is sacrificed to appease the environmental gods, the government requires that its engine and drive-train be ruined.

Never mind that good quality used cars and trucks are being destroyed in the name of progress. Never mind that some people simply cannot afford to pay for a new vehicle – even with a sizeable trade. These disadvantaged folks, who working two jobs in an attempt to make their own way, will no longer be able to find that “good-used car” down at Bob’s Bargain lot, because that car has been wrecked by the government with your tax dollars.

Never mind that the local repair shop will have fewer older cars and trucks to work on. Never mind that the used car market will be screwed-up for years to come. Better gas mileage is a noble aspiration – but it should not be forced. When the government artificially inflates a market it blows up. The housing market’s bubble burst, the same will also be true in an artificially inflated auto market.

The idea of trading in cars and trucks for more than they are worth really took hold with some people. People like a bargain, especially when their government is the one being loose with the purse strings. But the folks in Washington grossly underestimated the response to their offer. The Federal government’s Cash for Clunkers program, which started with $1 billion of your money, has now tripled the amount to $3 billion. Please remember this ridiculous margin for error whenever anyone talks to you about government controlled anything (health care, bail-outs, taxes etc.).

If this pattern of hope and change continues unfettered we will someday realize that when we traded our clunkers for cash we unwittingly gave away our freedom and liberty. The government is tightening its grip on what kinds of cars and trucks are built, sold, driven and destroyed. When the last big block Chevy Truck is silenced slap yourself in the forehead and say “I could have had a V-8, but I let the government take it away.”