Do Teachers Know Best?

Teachers have been maligned, derided, put on a pedestal, ignored, followed, awarded, lionized, and sued by parents. Administrators choose their favorite teachers as educators of the year, star teachers, or outstanding faculty, lavishing praise and accolades on those they deem the best team players.

The unprepared teachers or those who cause embarrassment to the school district through their unscrupulous and immoral behavior are usually quietly transferred elsewhere with excellent recommendations unless there is a teacher’s union that prevents dismissal of such specimens of the teaching profession.

Do teachers really know best? Etymologically speaking, they “show, point out, guide, give instruction” to their charges but some of them go beyond their call of duty for better or for worse. Teachers are able to instruct to the extent of their level of education, actual comprehension and knowledge of the subject matter, and their level and type of ideological programming. As a student I’ve had some fantastic professors and some atrocious indoctrinators.

A teacher has the opportunity eight hours a day to mold a child’s mind, the proverbial brain “full of mush,” independently of their parents’ wishes. They have your child’s rapt attention. Young pupils believe their teachers to be the ultimate authority on everything and are never wrong.

People Magazine awarded their 2013 Teacher of the Year to eight teachers who work in challenging environments such as “underfunded schools, students with difficult home lives, and language barriers.” The media and the public in general believe that throwing more money at education will resolve fundamental flaws.

Named “The supportive survivor,” Valencia Robinson from New Smyrna Beach Middle School in Florida is a yoga devotee. “I will not let my students eat junk food in my class.” Aside from the fact that students should not eat in class and eating healthy is a good idea, it is the parents’ role to choose their children’s diet; they have not abdicated that role once their children step into the classroom.

The fact that a teacher is technology-savvy does not make them a better teacher. There is no evidence that using technology in the classroom such as laptops, e-readers, and tablets improves long-term learning, retention, interest, or a child’s ability to remember and understand information previewed on an electronic device. Although lately scorned, there is a lot to be said about traditional reading, memorization of facts, poetry, problem solving, computation, and writing.

Additionally, in spite of the Common Core rhetoric, not all children are able to learn to the same level because they have different IQs, different talents, abilities, interests, and a set of predominant intelligence that is unique to that student (Gardner’s intelligencies, i.e. logical, musical, visual, verbal, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and existential).

The most interesting choice for People Magazine’s 2013 teachers of the year was the team from the A.L.B.A. Elementary School in Milwaukee, dubbed “The team that said “Se Puede!,” a Spanish version homage to President Obama’s empty campaign slogan, “yes we can,” “si, se puede.”

Radames Galarza describes the best part of his day as “Meeting parents outside the classroom in the morning. I love seeing them grow as community leaders.” I do not understand how it is the role of the teacher to shape parents into community leaders. When did teachers become community organizers?

Elisa Guarnero, Brenda Martinez, and Radames Galarza petitioned the school board for a charter school a decade ago, making multiculturalism part of the curriculum.  In other schools, the team saw students who spoke Spanish be “treated as though their culture and language were liabilities instead of assets.” “Bilingualism, with culture relevance and parental involvement, is a mixture for success, said Guarnero, as quoted by People.

It is a fact that non-English speaking students’ performance on standardized tests does bring down the average scores of the entire school, giving United States lower placing in reading, math, and science on international standardized tests than they would otherwise have.

At the Academia de Lenguaje y Bellas Artes (Why the Spanish name?), “400 youngsters start the day by saying the Pledge of Allegiance in English and Spanish.” The rigorous curriculum and the fine arts classes have helped students “beat state standards and math scores have surpassed the state average.”

Francis Bellamy composed the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States in English in 1892, not in Spanish, as an expression of loyalty to the federal flag and the republic of the United States of America. Modified four times since its composition, the Pledge was adopted by Congress in 1942 in English.   

A nation thrives when it is defined by one language and one culture with which generations can identify. Without a common language and respect for their parents’ and grandparents’ culture, forcing students to adopt languages of immigrant cultures alienates students from previous generations, turning them into global citizens surrounded by a hodge-podge of people from other nations who have no allegiance or love for the country they immigrated to. It certainly helped speed the demise of the Roman Empire when they did not require the invading hordes to speak Latin.

We are a nation of legal immigrants who have forged one distinct culture with one language and national borders that reflect who we are, unhyphenated Americans.  All past immigrants have learned English, assimilated and became part of our culture, of the fabric of our society, while celebrating their roots.

Unfortunately liberals made it necessary and passed laws to translate everything the federal government does in many languages, to the ridiculous extreme that Obamacare instructions and enrollment can be done in 150 languages. Our President was quite proud of this feature of the failed enrollment website. We have become the proverbial Tower of Babel.

Education tends to reward teachers who rave about other primitive cultures as superior while maligning, diminishing, or ignoring our own American culture.

Should we not reward teachers who educate our children to become Americans who love their country, who are proud of our technological achievements, and who become engineers, architects, scientists, writers, and home and nation builders?

Our children should not be taught to be ashamed of our country’s history, of our Christian roots and faith, of our exceptionalism and individuality, and of our important place and significant influence in the world.

It is commendable to reward good educators for all the right reasons. Rewarding the darling teachers who have a multicultural agenda, and who promote and influence the radical transformation of our national identity is a thin political ploy at liberal indoctrination.

Cyprus and Venezuela, Castro Care

Cyprus, a tiny island of less than one million people, is a small scale study in “big banking out of control,” “insane spending like there is no tomorrow,” coupled with “socialism runs out of other people’s money.” While researching the bailin and bailout of early summer, I found disturbing accounts of their socialized health care.

In return for a 10 billion bailout for Cyprus, the EU bureaucrats have demanded a bailin (read confiscation) of Cypriots’ savings and checking accounts. One bank offered worthless shares but another did not. Cypriots felt that they were used as “guinea pigs” to test if the scheme worked before they tried it in other places like Italy, Spain, and Greece. The confiscation of depositors’ money was dubbed in Cyprus the euphemism “the haircut.”

The European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, a.k.a. the Troika* (Russian for a three-way alliance) have required 40-60 percent confiscation of depositors’ money from the Bank of Cyprus in exchange for worthless shares and 100 percent confiscation from the Bank of Laikh; if a person had 100,000 euros in the bank, he/she was lucky to get a few cents back, said The Foreign Correspondent in a 30 minute documentary. Even the capital of small businesses had been commandeered and frozen, leaving employers unable to meet payroll and thus laid off workers. The economy became so depressed, the unemployment grew to thirty percent.

Cypriots were allowed to withdraw small amounts of money per day (200 euros) in order to prevent a run-on-banks. Easy credit and off shore investments encouraged by low taxes and relaxed regulations attracted a lot of banking to Cyprus and real estate exploded.

Michael Sarris, Finance Minister, said, “We were financing consumption beyond our means, causing a real estate bubble.” Following the Troika’s announcement of the “haircut” which the producers dubbed the “scalping,” the bubble burst and the real estate market crashed, causing a drop in property value of 50 percent.

“We do not deserve this harsh and cruel treatment,” said Sarris. Retirement savings were partly gone. The poor and the sick were hurt the most. The government did not provide the socialized medical care it had promised its citizens. And we are only talking about a small number of people, this island has less than one million inhabitants. Because the government was out of money and could not and would not pay for hospital care and other essential medical care for cancer patients, charities had to step in via month by month donations.

Charities such as The Association of Cancer Patients and Friends lost about 100,000 euros in the forced confiscation (30 percent). Narcissistic EU bureaucrats thought they knew better what was good for the people. Charitable donations were barely trickling in because so many Cypriots were still unemployed, broke, and dependent on food banks.

Why would EU and Cypriot bureaucrats not take into account the human cost of their decisions? The answer is simple, arbitrary and deep cuts made from a nicely appointed office do not carry the faces of individuals suffering the results of their cutthroat decisions.

The cancer palliative care to the end of life of 1,500 patients is run in people’s homes; a nurse visits every day to administer treatment. A relatively young patient in a lot of pain who had had a radical mastectomy was treated at home.  Her dressings were changed daily by a nurse who came to her home. Her husband, an Australian citizen residing in Cyprus, had to take a job in Australia in order to ship home needed money.

“Many patients like her will die at home without any medical support,” said the palliative care nurse. “It is a human right to give pain medication.”

It is certainly inhumane to let people suffer physically, mentally, and economically the consequences of the actions of a few who took advantage of unregulated banks and gambled with other people’s money, overinvesting in real estate and then making the poor and innocent bailout the country, rewarding the bank hucksters for their greed.

Hollywood has told us repeatedly in commercials, testimonials, expertly done glossies, and documentaries how wonderful medical care is in Europe, Venezuela, Cuba, China,  and how we should emulate those Fabian socialist/Marxist models.

The reality is that the health care system in Venezuela is in severe crisis after years of “government mismanagement and currency controls.” There are 19,000 cancer patients but 70 percent of radiotherapy machines are not operable. As it is the case in other socialist/communist countries, patients must buy their own medical supplies because the medical system is overwhelmed by supply shortages and inadequate or broken down medical equipment to treat those with otherwise treatable tumors.

Venezuela’s healthcare is free and universal, guaranteed in the 1999 Constitution, but what good is that guarantee if treatment and drugs are not available? It’s not that Venezuela cannot afford to foot the bill – the country sits on the largest proven oil reserves.  In spite of that, according to the AP, nine out of 10 hospitals have only 7 percent of the supplies they need. When Hugo Chavez took office, 200 public hospitals “were largely replaced by a system of walk-in clinics run by Cuban doctors that won praise for delivering preventative care to the neediest but do not treat serious illnesses. There are now 100 fully functioning public hospitals.” (Frank Bajak, Doctors Say Venezuela’s Health Care in Collapse, Associated Press)

A friend sought chemo treatment in one of the 400 private Venezuelan hospitals that rely on importation of drugs, equipment, and supplies. She did not make it. Her mom had knee replacement surgery in Caracas a few years ago. For 24 hours, no nurse checked her vital signs, they just stuck their heads in the door and did not disturb her because she appeared to be sleeping. She was paralyzed from a blood clot and never recovered.

My friend always told me how much cheaper procedures were in private hospitals in Venezuela. She flew there often for private care. She did not understand that the government price ceilings (caps) on procedures did not reflect the actual economic cost for the hospital – her government-enforced price was just a fraction of the real cost. The hospital had to absorb the difference.

Although Venezuela’s private hospitals have only 8,000 beds, said Frank Bajak of AP, “they treat 53 percent of the country’s patients, including 10 million public employees with health insurance.” Bajak quoted Dr. Jose Luis Lopez, “The health care crisis is an economic crisis. It is not a medical crisis.”

And it looks like the United States is going in the same direction with the unaffordable Affordable Care Act. The non-existent health care crisis will be turned into a nightmare. Instead of fixing the insurance system and promoting tort reform, the government is destroying the best health care system in the world. Instead of expanding care to a few million uninsured or underinsured, we are destroying the existing health insurance and care of half of our population because liberals have been salivating over one-payer government insurance and rationed care for years. Progressives are now succeeding because the low information masses have chosen Hollywood’s heavily advertised Castro Care.

What is happening in Venezuela today has happened in communist Romania I experienced. There was no anesthesia for elective surgery or dental care, equipment was broken, held with duct tape, inoperable, leaky and rusty pipes were present everywhere; foul odors, an overwhelming stench, and blood stains on peeling walls and floors overwhelmed the senses. Medical personnel fled abroad just like Romanian doctors fled to the European Union.

The wasteful socialist system in Venezuela buys medical supplies via Cuba, China, and Argentina instead of directly from the supplier. “The Cuban-run program of 1,200 clinics is a politically motivated waste of billions,” said Dr. Jose Felix Oletta as quoted by the AP. The clinics do not vaccinate or perform PAP smears resulting in a comeback of diseases like malaria, Dengue fever and more women dying of cancer or in child birth.

The problem with Chavez’ utopia was that poor people believed his rhetoric, they adored him for establishing anti-poverty programs and clinics for sniffles, they constantly voted for him, but many who applied for government benefits did not get them and neither did they get treatment when they became seriously ill with cancer or other ailments.

*Troika, for any Russian generally means a Tribunal consisting of three persons, each representing the prosecutor, the defense, and the judge. They served as an instrument of terror, condemning to death dozens, sometimes hundreds of people in one day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butler on Business, November 6, 2013, Executive Order on Climate Change

Ten minute discussion on Executive Order from November 1, 2013, Preparing the United States for the Impact of Climate Change. I come on at the 43 minute mark.
http://host1.cyberears.com//22566.mp3

Toll-Free Call to Enroll in Obamacare SATIRE

Since the Obamacare exchange phone number has crashed once or twice last week and the website is experiencing tiny code “glitches” that have momentarily crippled your ability to enroll in this administration’s signature legislation, Bud S. suggests to have fun with the toll-free call if you are lucky enough to get through. He also recommends blocking the call (star 67) although phone companies have sure ways of finding out who you are, where you live, and where you were standing when you made the call.

Tell them you want to get pencil and paper and walk slowly away from the phone. Take your time while they are on hold. Your call is important to them and they are not going to hang up. When you return, ask the operator some very good and important questions:

-          How much do my deductibles cost?

-          Is my doctor so and so on the list of approved doctors?

-          Is my hospital on the list?

-          How much are my deductibles for office visits, drugs, physical therapy, and hospital stays?

-          Do I get a single room or a ward?

-          I thought Obamacare was free?

-          Do I have to stop smoking right away?

-          Can I still party and get drunk every weekend?

-          Can I ingest as much salt, fatty foods, and Big Gulp sodas as I want?

-          Does Obamacare pay for eyeglasses, contact lenses, dental care, braces, and dentures?

-          Will my teeth be as yellow and crooked as the Europeans’?

-          Do Obamacare personnel drive me to doctors’ appointments? Can I call a cab and get reimbursed?

-          Can I have as many shrink sessions as I want?

-          Does IRS send me a bill?

-          If I don’t pay, do IRS agents put me in jail, take my house, car, money in the bank, retirement savings, furniture, and bling?

-          Does Obamacare insurance pay for massages, mud and sulphur bath treatments for two weeks like they do in Europe while I eat and sleep in a four star hotel?

-          Do I get breast enlargement and plastic surgery for free like they do in South America?

-          How much are my office visits? Can I go see my doctor as many times as I want and stay as long as I want until he hears all my whining and real and imagined medical problems?

-          Do I get expensive tests for free and with no waiting period?

-          If you don’t pay for my treatment, can I go outside of the country for treatment to, let’s say, Cuba? The MSM and Hollywood told us Cuba and Venezuela have stellar first class care and it’s free!

-          Is there malpractice insurance and can I sue the government if they remove my healthy appendix or operate on the wrong foot?

-          What if I change my mind, is there a lemon law to cancel my policy after three days if I don’t like it?

-          Can I read the entire policy that covers me before I sign up?

-          Can I have a copy of the policy in all 150 languages?

-          If I don’t like your doctors, can I keep mine if they are still in business?

Dial the number several times, maybe you get lucky and someone from Bangladesh will pick up after you press 2 for Spanish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Baby Boomers and the not so Affordable Care Act

Why is it that we needed the Affordable Care Act? Was it because everybody was told inaccurately that Americans were dying in the streets untreated? If you ask Europeans and people from other continents that is exactly the perception they have about the United States. They do not know that any American can walk sick into an emergency room and he/she will be treated immediately. They don’t have to wait weeks and months to have a doctor’s appointment, tests, and procedures before they are actually treated as is the case in all socialized medicine countries.

Why was it that Obamacare had to have a 15-member “death panel” that rations care based on age and utility to society, a complicated formula that only a bureaucrat can devise, not a doctor who took a Hippocratic Oath to care for all sick, regardless of age?

Will a person past the age of 55 be able to receive expensive treatments such as chemotherapy for cancer? We do know that anyone over the age of 70 becomes a “unit,” they are no longer human beings.

Between 1946 and 1964, there were 76 million Americans born, the so-called Baby Boomers. Four million had died by April 1, 2000. However, the U.S. Census counted 79.6 million due to “net immigration, the number of people coming into the United States from other countries, minus those moving the other way, outweighing the number of deaths.” http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/JustHowManyBabyBoomersAreThere.aspx

In 2011, the oldest Baby Boomers turned 65 years old, eligible for Medicare and Social Security. According to the Pew Research Center, for the next 19 years, 10,000 Baby Boomers will turn 65 every day. By 2030, all members of the Baby Boom generation would have reached 65. http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/baby-boomers-retire/

Every year approximately 3.65 million Baby Boomers receive an average $1,500 in earned Social Security benefits for a total of $5,475,000,000. The first wave started receiving their payments in 2011. In 2012, 3.65 more million Baby Boomers became eligible for the same benefits. In 2013, 3.65 more million Baby Boomers became eligible for $1,500 in Social Security, bringing the total outlay in three years to $16,525,000,000. Each year until 2030, $5,475,000,000 will be needed additionally to meet just the Social Security outlays for Baby Boomers.

Given the excellent state of medical care in this country at the moment, the nutrition, and the level of exercise, it is reasonable to assume that Baby Boomers will live 20 years past the age of 65 if their health care is not rationed.

Meanwhile, the employed labor force as reported in September 2013 was 144 million, shrunken by 11 million. Numbers did not specify how many of those employed were part-time and many discouraged workers were not reported or underreported, having dropped through the cracks of bureaucracy.  http://www.dlt.ri.gov/lmi/laus/us/usadj.htm

Part-time employment has been on the rise, prompting some economists to call U.S. “a part-time employment nation.” We do know that labor force participation has been stuck at 63.2 percent for at least two months. This labor force participation rate is the “share of the population 16 years and older working or seeking work.”  http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

If you divide the Social Security outlays for Baby Boomers each year for twenty years by the number of workers, the number is astronomical. It is mathematically impossible for the current labor force to support that many Baby Boomer retirees and other Social Security recipients and still have money for everything else in government.

Money paid to current Social Security recipients comes from the current number of workers and their employers paying an equal share of Social Security taxes. Self-employed pay both halves.

The ever-shrinking labor market will make it more difficult to meet the commitments made to the Baby Boomer generation and to other recipients. Once 11-12 million illegal aliens are amnestied, more individuals will be potentially added to the recipient rolls, particular SSI and disabled.

Is this not painfully obvious why politicians were eager to give us government socialized medicine, $719 billion cuts to Medicare over ten years to fund this socialized medicine, rationing of medical care, and a 15-member bureaucratic “death panel” to accomplish the rationing?

 

 

Socialized Medicine Is Dangerous to Your Health

Twenty-four years after communism went underground in 1989 (and is resurfacing with a vengeance today), medical care has not improved by leaps and bounds. If you are 17 years old and injure your foot, even though you carry with you the expected envelope stuffed with cash for the inexperienced doctor, your toe will look like this after six weeks of “expert” care.

Doctors worked from 7 to 3 p.m. in the former “communist workers’ paradise” where I grew up. On weekends the hospital was pretty much empty of medical personnel, save for a few janitors and the guard at the gate. He had to make sure no dirty people compromised the sterility of the hospital. The janitors did not do much work, judging by the filth around, the stinky bathrooms, the respectable layer of dirt, and by the blood stains and other unidentifiable marks on the peeling walls and on the broken linoleum.

Doctors who were treated like gods interceding between life and certain death by neglect were paid lower than teachers but supplemented their meager income with monetary bribes brought in envelopes and with hard to find items such as soap, shampoo, meat, cigarettes, and other sundries. Such bribes bought a patient immediate attention, better care, a needed prescription, a blood test that took days instead of weeks and a chance at survival if the surgeon did not botch the operation. A doctor had a file with special clients in it, marked by alphabetized envelopes with the patient’s name and the amount of cash enclosed.

A few very good doctors were besieged by patients from a wide geographical region although it was against the law to treat them. They were to serve only the residents assigned to them by the communist party headquarters. Since quitting time was 3 p.m., some doctors continued their private practice illegally in their government assigned apartments. Everyone knew about it but the economic police did not stop it because their families often used the doctor’s services after hours as well. Even live chicken, eggs, butter, cheese, preserves, and wine were accepted as payment.

The poorly paid doctors were assigned to practice medicine in designated areas by the government, had thousands of patients, did not keep records, and their sparsely furnished waiting rooms were filled to capacity like sardines every day. Although medical care was “free” and people did not get much for free, after 3 p.m., nobody moved, everyone understood that now they had to pay to be seen.

As a child, I remember waiting with my Mom from 7 a.m. until late into the night to be seen by a doctor, holding a piece of cardboard with my assigned number on it, racked with fever, hoping to get the miracle pill that would bring my fever down.

The local pharmacy shelves were mostly empty even of that miracle drug (a bitter-tasting version of Tylenol called “piramidon”) but the doc had his own sources and we could buy it from him – the black market was thriving. Sometimes he even had antibiotics for sale. They were great because it cured the burning fire in my throat quickly. He would give me an excuse for school and I would go home and lay in bed for days, alternating between fever-induced bad dreams and reality.

Come to think of it, when we were in Italy recently, where medicine is socialized, Aspirin and Tylenol were regulated by government and could not be bought on the market without a prescription. I could not understand why since it was available on American posts and Italians were clamoring to buy it from them.

After only six years of medical school and no practical experience in hospitals or internships, all doctors were ill-prepared to care for their patients. Lucky people survived, those who were not so lucky succumbed to complications from simple procedures which the inexperienced doctors bungled. Hapless and innocent people who trusted doctors with incipient medical skills were laboratory rats.

Many family members died before their time from simple procedures such as appendicitis, tonsillectomies, hernias, thyroidectomies, and other surgeries that we take for granted here in the U.S. Raging infections would set in, some developed septicemia and gangrene from nicked organs and intestines, and patients died a painful and unnecessary death. None of the doctors were held accountable because families could not sue the government for malpractice.

The American Embassy evacuated their personnel for medical treatment to West Germany or other developed countries in the West, they were never sent to Romanian hospitals during Ceausescu’s communist era.

There are private clinics today in Romania that give stellar care and drugs are available for a fee. Capitalist free market care does work very well. But all the public hospitals and pharmacies that provide socialized medicine run out of their rationed drugs, supplies, surgeries, procedures, and tests early in the year. After that, they have no choice but to turn patients away and ration care based on age.

Dental medicine was very scary as well. Appointments for painful teeth that needed removing were made six months from the onset of an abscess or a painful cavity. Teeth were drilled, root canaled, and removed without any anesthetics in spite of the patient’s screams, pain or bloody discomfort, and the doctor used boiling, no autoclaving procedures for his instruments. He did not have an assistant or a nurse. Tooth cleaning or braces were not offered; the procedures were generally considered to damage teeth and not recommended in stomatology school.

Ambulances were a joke. Devoid of medical equipment then, they were more or less a way to transport patients from rural areas to urban areas hospitals. They did not arrive in a timely manner, offered no comfort to the patient during the very bumpy ride, and, aside from the driver who was more interested in picking up hitch-hikers to make an extra buck, there was no medical personnel on board. Things have improved under a more capitalist-based economy, ambulances have come a long way since then, but care is still sketchy and rationed. Hospitals run out of government allotted money for ambulance service relatively early in the year.  After that, severe rationing occurs.

Large hospital wards were depressing “wailing rooms” where elderly were stuck to die, screaming in pain, attended by family members who brought them food, sheets, morphine (if available) purchased outside the hospital, and without any nursing care much less around the clock as is the case in the U.S. If a patient did not have a family, he/she died a painful and neglected death.

Things have not changed that much in 24 years. Recently, my aunt cared for her husband round the clock in the hospital, administering his meds, giving him shots, in a more modern version of public hospitals in 2013 Romania.

I was horrified by the lack of medical personnel, cleanliness, and otherwise professional medical care. Nothing like the first rate care I had experienced in American hospitals. And this was one of the best public hospitals in Romania in which the skilled doctors actually saved my uncle’s life following brain surgery.

I was shocked when I tried to use the only restroom on the floor that both patients and visitors used. The tub and shower had not been used in a long time judging by the patina of thick grime everywhere. An elderly female patient dressed in street clothes was washing her dirty laundry by hand in the bathroom sink. The commode stall had huge open-wide windows, visible to the floors above. The stench reminded me of our high school latrines.

It is no surprise that many doctors have migrated from Romania to work in other EU countries where socialized medicine is a little less gruesome, remuneration is more generous, rationing is enforced by law, compliance rewarded, and euthanasia is practiced legally.

Can anyone try to imagine what our brand of socialized one-payer medical system will be like in the United States in the very near future?

The often repeated rhetorical phrases, “everyone knows it’s broken,” and the Pinocchio promise, “he will fix it,” mesmerized everyone as if by magic. One shudders to think what the “fixes” will be when the health care itself was not broken and everyone had universal healthcare anyway. All they had to do is show up at an emergency room sick and they were treated.

One reader named Gene surmised Obamacare as “A one word portent for the destruction of the world’s most enviable, most successful, and most sought-after and effective health care enterprise, through nationalization; accomplished tangentially, the crippling of the national economy, and an irreparable loss of personal liberty.”

 

 

The American Dream, Just an Illusion

As a teenager, I used to day dream about escaping the oppressive communist society where we lived. I did not have a passport and a snowball chance in hell of getting one, I did not have any money, and our travel was restricted to a 20 mile radius, as far as our feet could carry us, as far as the rickety government-run buses would transport us, and as far as our pocketbooks allowed. We were so poor though, the wind whistled through our pockets most of the time.

I hid in Grandpa’s tall corn fields or in the woods by my favorite creek to do my deep thinking and planning. I could not afford to day dream in school. I was afraid the security agents, teachers, and the community organizers in the neighborhood that kept us in check around the clock would be able to read my thoughts or I would blurt something out that would give my thoughts away and get me and my family in trouble. Under communism, parents were responsible and guilty for their children’s deeds and anti-communist thoughts, statements, or unapproved behavior. Many careless comments by children with loose tongues sent their parents to Jilava or Siberia.

My dream to come to the United States, the land of freedom, seemed so impossible at the time. I could not swim, therefore I could not attempt to take the plunge across the Danube like some of my compatriots did; they were shot or drowned trying to flee. The currents were pretty strong and swift. I knew I would be shot at the border – many Romanians tried that as well and were executed on the spot. Those who succeeded ran the chance of being discovered and returned to the motherland, followed by torture and worse.

I made it even though I looked over my shoulder in fear and trepidation up to the moment the airplane took off. I just knew an agent would open the door and yank me off the plane, sending me back to the hell hole of communism. I could see and smell freedom once the plane took off. I could breathe and be free to speak my mind! I thank God for allowing me to enjoy relative freedom for 35 years. Will it be a long time before I complete the full circle, living again under communism, this time in “the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

People from around the world still dream to come to the United States. For most, it remains just a pipe dream. But even those who hate Americans wish they could be on American soil, somehow magically transported across the oceans, to have the opportunity to succeed and attain the American dream. And then there are those who come here with the dream and intent to change America into a caliphate.

The lucky Latin Americans can trek to our southern border and cross it freely now – few agents are allowed to apprehend them anymore and liberals make sure that they are never deported to their own countries. Crossing the border illegally into the U.S. is a lucrative business for Latinos, their progressive lobby in Washington, and the small and large businesses that wish to hire cheap labor. The proximity to our borders gives illegals carte blanche to break the law, take advantage of our lawless government, and become permanent wards of the American taxpayers. We should at least get a picture of the illegal aliens whose financial welfare and wellbeing we are sponsoring with our taxes. Their illegal children have become the “Dreamers” who demand everything American children get; it is their “right” and “entitlement.”

American teenagers here still dream to go to college, to have a career, to have a family, a solid job, and to grow old in freedom and prosperity. Unfortunately their dreams are fast turning into illusions, a frightening reality of joblessness, financial and health insecurity, welfare dependency, drug culture, immigration nightmare, socialist government control, and the diminishing chance of ever owning a home while holding a worthless college degree without the prospect of employment.

I fulfilled my dream of becoming an American citizen by choice. I cherished my freedom and never took for granted the chance at a better life, the education and prosperity it offered me if I was willing to work hard.  Americans should thank God every day for being born in this exceptional country.

Overseas dreamers have been waiting patiently for years the resolution of their cases. Four millions of them are still hoping to come to the United States. They are not so lucky – oceans separate them from the “shining city on the hill,” the land of opportunity that lately looks more and more like the land of OZ.