Well, after much time in mourning, if not for one lost loved one then for another, if not for the loss of life as I knew it, I have decided that the time has come for me to once again bare the teeth and the claws and try hard to understand why it is that our government leaders are hell bent on screwing us, over and over again here in the great (and over-populated) Golden State, California. I may bitch about it here, about how high the cost of living is in some areas, about the smog, the crowds, the blatantly overpaid idiots who seem to draw attention and a big fat paycheck for doing basically nothing helpful for more than just a few people, but this place is my home. I was born and raised here, a product of a Los Angeles County upbringing.

So here we are, only in the infancy stages of our latest President's term in office, and love him or hate him, he is who we have and he is the guy in charge. With new leadership there always comes new stupidity. OK, so maybe this latest bout with stupidity is not something that is new. It is perhaps one of those bouts with stupidity that one Senator on the hill seems to think we need here in California.

Do I believe that we all need health care? Of course I do. We all get sick. We all need to see a doctor now and again, but the problem is that there is so much red tape and so many insurance rules, regulations and crapola that in order to see a doctor we have to get there before we are ailing. They are called "well visits," which, if you are me, you think something totally different when you think about a "well visit." (It has to do with a shot glass and a very forgiving bartender...anyway...)

I would not have started researching this SB 810 if it were not for a high school classmate of mine named Lisa. She posted it to her Facebook "wall," and well, let's just say that it took on a life of its own. With the onset of an AIG led blind robbery of the American people, it is no wonder that Senator Leno would seem to suckle on the teat of the fearful Americans. And why should we not be afraid? Our entire economy is on a roller coaster ride right now, and there seems no end in sight. Now this ...guy...wants us to foot the bill for "Universal Health Coverage for ALL Californians."

ALL(?) Californians?
Which "all," and may I see your green card, please?
Yup, I said it, now deal with it. Now, I will not say that all those who are here illegally are the total cause of all this, and I am pretty sure that the guy who fathered this bill is banking on the fears of all of us here in the great state of California are so worried about getting catostrophically sick that we will have to go into hawk just to pay the bills that we will just automatically fall over ourselves because the words "universal" and "health" happen to be words that are used in the literature of the bill over and over again. I think this guy is hoping that the state of the economy is so horribly bad that we will all just take it for granted that this is probably a pretty good idea. Well, it isn't. In fact, it is a monstrously horrible idea, and one that we need to quash immediately.

This is the uproar being caused by this bill at the moment, and there is a less-than-quiet minority that is starting to become a very vocal and loud majority who have had absolutely enough of the idea that we, the people of California, are so stupid that we are just going to believe what we are told. I think the guys who think they are in charge of this place forget where it is that their paychecks come from - FROM OUR PAYCHECKS...hello?

How many of you reading this right now are convinced that paying for all the emergency room visits of people who are not here legally, paying for all of Nadya Suleman's children and her to get free healthcare, all those people who can afford health care but who woul rather save the money and get it free, are going to somehow come from anywhere but your paychecks? Now, I am not talking about the man who worked for years who lost his job and then became sick as a dog from all the stress - if anyone needs something like this it is that guy and his family. And I am not talking about the single mom of even one child who recently lost her job and is currently collecting unemployment benefits, and I am not even talking about that family who lost everything after they worked so hard for it all and is now barely scraping by on welfare. These are the people who need to be taken care of. They worked for a long time and fell on hard times. They deserve to have what they can get because they paid into the system.

The folks who I am talking about are those who end up in California from all over the planet, who come here and behave as though this place sucks so badly that they should have stayed in their own countries (I wonder what they are all waiting for?) and who are now not only collecting wages under the table but who are also collecting some other kind of public aid. These are the people who this bill will benefit the most. The language used in the bill is so complex that it would take someone with a modicum of intelligence that of a college professor because the only other crowd who would are those who work in the insurance industry and in law - LAWYERS, in other words.

This bill will do more harm than it will ever do any good. Our state is already cash strapped as it is, and the debt is being paid by all of us. This bodes very badly for those of us who work independently of an employer. I am a freelance writer, and the money I make is the only money that I have. At the beginning of the year I have to be very careful with what I claim because if it is even a nickel off, the feds are coming to see why, and they are going to want receipts.

BUT, if someone like the guy down the street who works for a living, who does not file his taxes but instead chooses to not just work but also collect welfare, unemployment, food stamps, Medi-Cal and free services for himself, brings his whole family here from whatever God foresaken part of the world he came from, and then tells them all that they can also do this same thing, who is going to pay that bill that he and his family members create?

Well, guys, the same folks who pay them now - you and me, and we already pay for a LOT of stuff, stuff that we may not ever use.

WE have a lot at stake here, folks, and it is up to us to see to it that what little we have left is not forcibly taken from us in the form of bills and laws that can do no one who does not use the emergency room as their primary care physician's office. These guys who write these bills already are taxing smokers an additional 80 cents extra per pack, and an extra 8.00 per carton, all to help fund this political nonsense that is being fueled by nothing more than pure greed which feeds off of the fear which permeates our very existence at the moment. The new cigarette taxes are another thing that we are paying for - all of us, and we don't even relize it because many just assume that it is the smoking folks who have to pay for it. This is not true- lots of hard working people are paying for it in losses to their businesses - businesses that we all frequent from time to time.

Folks, we can't fix our problems all on our own, but certainly we don't need to be helping out those who we know would never do the same for us. People keep saying that the reason fools keep coming here is because of the weather, but I think it is because of the lax attitude when it comes to caring for our own here. If you love this place as much as I do, as much as I know a lot of people do, then you will act responsibly and help us fight the ignorance and the arrogance of those in appointed office.

Vote NO on SB 810

Now, go have a glass of wine, stomp around angrily and cuss like a sailors, for tomorrow and everyday after that, we fight! Maybe not with our fists, but with our votes...

MAPU