An Octopus? So what?

Rebuttal

I have never had the pleasure of meeting Cline Calhoun but I hope to remedy that soon. He and I have communicated via e-mail on several occasions and I find him to be a personable and friendly man. I am impressed by his witty writing style and heartfelt comments but we often find ourselves on opposite sides of a political divide. That is all right. People can do that and still remain friends despite what we see on television and hear on talk radio. One of the great lies foisted on the American people is that we must treat those who are ideologically different as though they are pariahs too vile to associate with. Having said that I am going to pick on a column that Mr. Calhoun wrote lately about the octopus. His depiction of the octopus as a brainy creature is apt since it has one of the largest brains in the undersea world and is considered to be quite intelligent. His association with it as an evil example of government is something I disagree with. I am going to voice my disagreements using the same pattern Mr. Calhoun used in his column.

Department of Health and Human Resources---it appears the object of derision is the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as “Obamacare.” Previous Presidents, both Democratic and Republican, have had a vision of universal health care as a moral and ethical right for all citizens. Of the nations in the advanced world the United States is the only one that fails in that regard. But critics of the ACA fail to deal with the problem of ballooning health care costs and their impact on insurance rates, costs of doing business and Medicare. The premise of the ACA is that all people are involved in consuming health care whether or not they choose to do so. If someone falls ill from hepatitis that person is likely to be treated at an Emergency Room and then admitted to a hospital that will be forced to use dollars for indigent care. To pay for that indigent care the hospitals and insurance companies will pass the burden on to those who can pay. The only one who benefits from this is that person who did not participate in purchasing health care and even that is debatable because if he had purchased health care his disease may not have become an emergency thereby consuming thousands of extra dollars. $716 Billion was stripped from payments to insurance carriers for the Medicare Advantage Plans that cost more to deliver health care than even straight Medicare. It was a cash cow for the insurance companies. Do you want government to be efficient or not? The additional $500 Billion was to be cut from Medicare under the fiscal cliff penalties that have now been averted. The claim that one can do nothing about it is a matter of debate. After all, we just had an election that dealt with that. And a Supreme Court decision to boot. We went through all this just a few years ago. It is finally the law of the land, let's give it a rest.

The Department of Labor—we may just have a different opinion on this one. Mr. Calhoun paints this Department as being infiltrated by “unionists” as if that is a bad thing. The Department of Labor is there to protect the American worker against employer abuse in many different ways such as the many forms of discrimination, unequal pay, worker intimidation, sexual harassment and dangerous working conditions just to name a few. The allegation that the department favors union shops and instigates protests against the so called “right to work laws” is just preposterous as is the naming of unionization and battles against “right to work laws” as its “primary purpose.” My perspective is that without labor unions the rights of the American worker would more like the sweatshops in Latin America or Eastern Europe. It is the Department of Labor that protects the American worker from having the standard of living of Bangladesh and right now it's not doing a great job.

The Department of Homeland Security—we may actually agree on the vileness of this department but for different reasons. Mr. Calhoun sees it as uniquely supporting illegal immigration and I really don't know where that came from. There are a lot of complaints that are more fitting for the Department of Agriculture about food stamps and such. My complaint about this department is that it has financed some of the largest government boondoggles in our history. It has not only chipped away at our civil liberties in the name of security but it has jack-hammered them all in the name of terrorism. I am much more afraid of having my right to be secure in my papers and effects taken away than I am of some terrorist. We already had some very good agencies on the job that just needed some shaking up and called to task. We did not need this spy in the sky. Speaking of which, already the manufacturers of those drones are trying to get Congress to allow them over United States airspace. How long until they want to add a hellfire missile?

The Environmental Agency—I have to tell you. I am a big fan of this agency. My opinion is that it is a dirty job but someone's got to do it. Every action they take for the good of the American people is an action that has an impact on some corporation's bottom line. After all, it costs money to clean up messes and the question is who should pay for it. The public or the one who made the mess. However, the complaint against this department seems mainly to be invective against various forms of taxation which have nothing at all to do with this department.

I do, however, understand the use of the octopus as metaphor. The tentacles of government reach into every aspect of our lives. Some fear this and rightly so because the overreach of government can be as dangerous as the lack of effectiveness. We have a strange system of government that we tend to idealize but the fact is that it exists always in a state of tension with some pulling this way and some pulling that way. That tension is what keeps us more or less in a state of balance and allows our government to change to suit the prevailing tenor of the people, more or less.

This is why it is important to not demagogue the person who disagrees with you. His or her opinion is relevant to providing the balance our nation needs. Fact of the matter is that sooner or later you are going to need that person for the times all of us have to pull together. It is difficult to go hat in hand to ask forgiveness when you could have avoided the altercation altogether.

My take on a few of the points of the referenced column. As always, I am interested in your opinions so please write to me. Some of the other points of that column such as immigration will require more space than is available here. We will deal with that later.