“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”    – Benjamin Franklin

That is what we have done in the United States.  We have created a subset class of persons who have discovered that they can vote themselves money that the government does not really have any more.  Are they satisfied?  No.  They want more.  And how dare that anyone should suggest rationality and reasonableness particularly when it has to do with what might be affordable and what is not.

The Democrats started this fiasco.  The Republicans find themselves unwilling and therefore unable to govern themselves out of this morass.  Compromise has become to be seen as some sort of dirty word as each of these polarities scream out “Hurrah for our side”.  The latter would not be so bad were it not obvious to anyone with open eyes and two functioning ears that we are watching our Republic descend further into its self mutilation and burning.  Some even have the audacity to enjoy the fiddler’s tune while our politicians sell America’s future down river.

I would not be so irritated by this had I not been warning that history suggested this outcome from the start.  Exasperating my sense of futility here is the knowledge that in the early 70s when universal healthcare was approached by Nixon and Ted Kennedy, they found a compromise that relied on the free market not excessive taxation. The prognosis was that it was expected to pass.  Watergate happened and that compromise washed into history.

I know these ideas come and go.  That’s not the issue to me.  The issue to me is simply this.  We have what was a workable model in the 1970s.  Why has neither side in this nation reexamined this option and tweaked and wonked out the components necessary to make it modernized and suggested we as a nation revisit it?  Again, we are talking Nixon and Ted Kennedy and they had found something that satisfied both.  It seems worthy of at least consideration.

But instead, we have politicians who would rather financially bleed out America. That bothers me a lot.  I fought for this nation.  I love this nation.  My family’s history is enmeshed in the history of this nation.  Doesn’t this bother any of you all out there too?  I think it does given what I read in the media.  If our leaders won’t lead, maybe we need to do that.  Lead. Stop following.  And get the obstructive politicians out of the way!