October 30, 1938

Orson Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells' 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of "The Shadow" in the hit mystery program of the same name. "War of the Worlds" was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause.

The show began on Sunday, October 30, at 8 p.m. A voice announced: "The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in 'War of the Worlds' by H.G. Wells."

Sunday evening in 1938 was prime-time in the golden age of radio, and millions of Americans had their radios turned on. But most of these Americans were listening to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy "Charlie McCarthy" on NBC and only turned to CBS at 8:12 p.m. after the comedy sketch ended and a little-known singer went on. By then, the story of the Martian invasion was well underway.

Welles introduced his radio play with a spoken introduction, followed by an announcer reading a weather report.  An announcer broke in to report that "Professor Farrell of the Mount Jenning Observatory" had detected explosions on the planet Mars. Then dance music came back on, followed by another interruption in which listeners were informed that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer's field in Grovers Mills, New Jersey.

Soon, an announcer was at the crash site describing a Martian emerging from a large metallic cylinder. "Good heavens," he declared, "something's wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now here's another and another one and another one. They look like tentacles to me ... I can see the thing's body now. It's large, large as a bear. It glistens like wet leather. But that face, it... it ... ladies and gentlemen, it's indescribable.”

Perhaps as many as a million radio listeners believed that a real Martian invasion was underway. Panic broke out across the country. In New Jersey, terrified civilians jammed highways seeking to escape the alien marauders. People begged police for gas masks to save them from the toxic gas and asked electric companies to turn off the power so that the Martians wouldn't see their lights. One woman ran into an Indianapolis church where evening services were being held and yelled, "New York has been destroyed! It's the end of the world! Go home and prepare to die!"  (History.com)

Seventy five years ago today Orson Welles scared the bejesus out of some people.  Some claim that the hysteria surrounding the broadcast of “War of the Worlds” was exaggerated by the media, primarily newspapers.

  However, with radio as a primary source of entertainment and news, including dramatic “breaking news” reports, it isn’t hard to believe that some took the radio play seriously.  Even today some take news broadcasts as gospel.  Emotional thinking and reaction generally overshadows rational thinking.

Orson Welles was a broadcast genius.

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Back Home

We are back home from our weekend trip to Omaha and Pug-o-ween.

The event was well attended and it was apparent that the venue chosen by the organization was way too small.  Especially with the vendors display tables and all the people with dogs in tow.

Doug, being the laid back Pug that he is, took it all in stride.  Our son made a stealth bomber costume for him and while Doug could care less about the “attachment”,  he did look at us like “what the hell are these stupid humans doing.”  He wore it at the event for about an hour, but right after the costume judging contest was over, he was relieved to have it taken off so he could more easily sniff all the other Pugs.  We were disappointed we didn’t win in the “best homemade costume” portion of the contest.  Doug could care less.

Fall feels like it is quickly moving to winter here on the farm as the trees lose more and more leaves every day.  

We are 30 days away from taking our first trip south with our fiver for the winter since retirement.   Man, what a lot of planning that takes.

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Pug-o-ween

We are in Omaha again for the weekend.  We hitched up the fiver for one last weekend trip before I winterize it.  Seems like a bit of work to winterize it since we are leaving on our very first trip south for the winter since retirement right after Thanksgiving.  However, sure don't want to take a chance on a Nebraska early freeze.

Tomorrow we will attend the Pug-o-ween fundraiser, sponsored by the Pug Partners, which is a Pug rescue and adoption organization.

Doug the Pug is excited to attend Pug-o-ween and the events.

It's a nice fall weekend, so we're taking advantage of it.

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KIVA - Check It Out

I’ve posted this before and it is worth mentioning again.

On the right side of this blog is a gadget for KIVA. 

I first learned of this organization from fellow blogger Croft Randle.  It is a non-profit organization that facilitates loans around the globe to individuals who need a helping hand.  For as little as $25 you can make loans, which are returned to your account when repaid.  The money can then be loaned out again.  It is amazingly simple and rewarding. 

Kiva is a win-win for everyone.   They are offering $25 free trial.  Follow this link below or go to Kiva.org and check it out. 

$25 FREE TRIALS!

http://www.kiva.org/invitedby/bill34572836

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Huh?!

Back in November, 2011 at the University of California - Davis, peaceful protesters as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement were pepper sprayed by a campus cop.  The protesters were seated and made no aggressive actions.  Now comes word that the campus cop who sprayed the protesters has been awarded $38,059 in a workers’ compensation settlement.

Huh?!

Administrative Law Judge Harter has approved a workers’ compensation settlement totaling $38,059 between UC Davis and Pike, a former Marine-turned-campus law enforcement lieutenant.  (Enterprise newspaper)

UC-Davis campus cop John Pike was making $121,680 annually when he was fired from the department.  Later Pike filed a workers’ compensation claim, citing psychiatric problems from the pepper spray incident - namely depression and anxiety resulting from death threats after videos of the spraying went public.

The Enterprise reported that local psychiatrist Richard Lieberman rated Pike’s disability as “moderate,” according to a Jan. 5 psychiatric report released by the State Department of Industrial Relations.  According to Lieberman, Pike faced “continuing and significant internal and external stress with respect to resolving and solving the significant emotional upheavals that have occurred in his life.”

What ever happened to the good ol' days when they used to just whack those pesky protesters with nightsticks?  No post traumatic stress there.

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Something Upbeat

Here’s something a bit more upbeat  - not necessarily a guy thing though, but quilter Paulette Doyle might appreciate it, especially since she is a retired teacher also. 

When my wife retired from teaching she was surprised by my brother’s wife with an amazing double sided quilt she made.  It was recently put on display at a quilt show.

Side one depicts the 12 months of the year for students, starting with September since that is the traditional start of the school year.

Side two depicts a quote from teacher/astronaut Christa McAulliffe and numerical/alphabet themes.  It also includes items from our life on the farm:  gardening, chickens, guineas and our pug dog.

I’m told double sided quilts are hard to make and am sure many hours went into this quilt.  It is an amazing tribute to my wife’s teaching career.  

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The Troll Is Back

Dick Cheney, who is like a troll that crawls out from under the bridge, is back in the news shamelessly pandering his new book. 

This is the guy who manipulated the country into war, costing billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands in lives, all the while profiting as an insider with Halliburton. This is the guy with a net worth of $90 million, who badmouthed the Affordable Care Act, but neglects to tell who paid for his $1 million heart transplant at age 71 - the taxpayers!

Fortunately for Cheney, the cost of his health care was covered by taxpayers. In addition to health insurance provided through the government for Cheney’s years of service, Cheney, like millions of other Americans was eligible for Medicare benefits when he turned 65. In most cases, if you are retired and have Medicare, as well as health plan coverage from a former employer, Medicare pays first. The group health plan coverage pays second. Either way, it’s tax dollars at work. (Forbes)

This is the guy who essentially appointed himself vice-president.

Asked about that during the CBS interview, Cheney became irritated.

“I didn’t seek the job,” he told interviewer Sanjay Gupta. “The president came to me and asked me to be his vice president. The party nominated me. The doctors that consulted on it reached a common conclusion and the people elected me. Now what basis do I override the decision making process?”  (CBS News)

Though Cheney said he “didn’t seek the job,” he actually served the Bush campaign as head of its vice presidential search committee. When the search was concluded, the committee chaired by Cheney concluded that Cheney himself should become Bush’s running mate.

A reporter for the Washington Post, Barton Gellman, investigated the Bush campaign’s VP selection process and revealed that neither Cheney nor Bush interviewed any other candidates before Cheney got the nod.

Other candidates were interviewed later, to conceal that the process was rigged, Gellman wrote.  (Raw News)

And now Cheney is downplaying the damage and resulting financial cost caused by the Tea Party Republicans during the government shutdown.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney downplayed the rift created within his Republican party by the Tea Party, calling it a positive influence. “It’s an uprising, in part, and the good thing is it’s taken place with in the Republican party. I don’t see it as a negative. I think it’s much better to have that kind of ferment and turmoil and change in the Republican party than it would be to have it outside,” he said Monday on TODAY.  (NBC Today)

You know what Dick...  my tax dollars paid for your war while you profited financially.  My tax dollars paid for your million dollar heart transplant while you sit on $90 million.  My tax dollars were wasted on your party’s government shutdown.  It’s time for you to crawl back under the bridge and shut the hell up.

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Driving In Iowa And Prejudicial Enforcement

The cruise control on the PT Cruiser was set at the 70-mph limit, but Frank Furillo says his car automatically picked up speed on an Interstate Highway 35 incline in southern Iowa.

Lights flashed, and the Wisconsin man pulled over.

Iowa State Patrol officer Andrew Ehrsam told Furillo he clocked him at 74 mph and asked him to step into his patrol car, Furillo said. 

“All of the sudden the trooper who pulled me over starts interrogating me,” said Furillo, age 60.

“The questions went on for a long time — so long, it really got my dander up. He was way out of bounds.”

What Furillo experienced in May happens to thousands of drivers in Iowa, according to data obtained under open-records laws by The Des Moines Register Reader’s Watchdog. But out-of-state motorists are far more likely than Iowans to be pulled over by state troopers on interdiction teams, which are on the lookout for speeding, drug trafficking and other crimes, the data show.

A review of about 22,000 traffic warnings and citations issued by two State Patrol crime-interdiction teams from 2008 to last year shows that 86 percent went to out-of-state motorists.

Furillo contacted The Des Moines Register Reader’s Watchdog after he felt he was targeted and interrogated because of his out-of-state license plates.

Similar complaints have been made to the Iowa citizen’s aide ombudsman. And allegations that state troopers have overstepped their authority while questioning motorists and searching their vehicles have spawned legal challenges in recent years.  (The Des Moines Register)

Somewhere along the line the zeal to take a bite out of crime has flowed over into stopping average citizens on a pretext or a simple infraction (like 4 mph over the speed limit) and harassing them.  Clearly when 86 percent of warnings and citations in Iowa were given to out of state vehicles that is a pattern.  

The Iowa State Patrol claims they are trying to be vigilant for drug trafficking, but it is evident that their traffic stops are targeted, or what is now known as profiling.  If it isn’t profiling, then it is certainly a case of prejudicial enforcement.  This is vigilance run amuck. 

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Really Stupid

Two Boy Scout leaders say they have received death threats after a video of them toppling an age-old rock formation in Utah went viral online.

Nearly two million people have watched the video of Glenn Taylor pushing a massive 170 million-year-old red rock over in Goblin Valley State Park, filmed by his fellow scout leader Dave Hall.  They had been leading a small group of scouts in studying and playing amid the eerie and spectacular rock formations.

The pair, who celebrated by doing high fives after the rock fell, insist they pushed it because it was loose and they feared it could topple onto a visitor to the park.

A Utah state parks spokesman, Eugene Swalberg, said possible criminal charges were being considered.

“This is not behavior that is appreciated or should exist in state parks,” he told the Deseret News. “This has been formed for literally millions of years, and it’s supposed to last for a long time.

“It doesn’t need individuals doing the work of Mother Nature.”

I saw this report on the news a couple of nights ago and was amazed these guys were so stupid.  What’s next on their list of fun things to do - toppling grave headstones so they don’t fall on someone?  Let’s hope jail time is in their future, or at the very least a lifetime ban from state and national parks.

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A Night At The Opera

Well, actually not the Marx Brothers “A Night at the Opera.”  On Wednesday night we attended the Omaha Playhouse production of Les Misérables. 

   

We have gone to community theater in various towns and expected this show to be a scale above those, since it is a metropolitan theater.  We were wrong.  It exceeded anything we have been to.  It was flawless and one of the best performances we have ever attended.  This was especially amazing since the only actor who was not local was the one who played Jean Valjean.

Omaha Community Playhouse Marquee

Naturally, the lead character Jean Valjean was highlighted, however all the other local actors  were just as good and he was surpassed by the actor playing Javert.  It is little wonder every night of this production was sold out.

Photographs weren’t allowed, however we did manage a few blurry cell phone photos.

Last night our son, his girlfriend and our daughter and her husband came to our fiver for an evening of pizza and beer.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  Today we will head back home and the routine of the farm.  Coming to the big city of Omaha is always fun, but it sure is nice to get back to the country.

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Hatchet Man

Demonstrators crowded the sidewalk outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices took on the hot-button issue of affirmative action, hearing oral arguments in a case about Michigan's voter-backed ban on using race as a criterion in college admissions.

The gathered advocates urged the top court to stand by a 2003 ruling which held that the country's colleges can choose to use affirmative action practices in deciding which students to admit.

At issue is whether a 2006 Michigan constitutional amendment that blocks the state from taking account of race and gender in public education, employment and contracting constitutes discrimination or preferential treatment.  Opponents of the ban sued and won in a federal appeals court, arguing that the prohibition is tantamount to discrimination, blocking only minority students from seeking preferences in school admissions.  (NBC News)

Once again the Supreme Court is hearing an affirmative action case and once again they are poised to eviscerate another protection for minorities, with the main hatchet man, Justice Antonin Scalia, taking the lead.  In another landmark case in February Scalia said Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was a “perpetuation of racial entitlement” and voted with the majority to strike the provision. 

Speaking on the admissions case Tuesday Scalia said, “The 14th Amendment protects all races, not “only the blacks. My goodness, I thought we’ve – we’ve held that the 14th Amendment protects all races. I mean, that was the argument in the early years, that it protected only – only the blacks. But I thought we rejected that. You – you say now that we have to proceed as though its purpose is not to protect whites, only to protect minorities?”  

Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the most outspoken justice on the bench about the Michigan ban, at one point saying: "It was intended to bring back segregation, and appears to have done just that."

While Scalia is technically correct that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t specifically refer to blacks, it is clear that it didn’t need to.  The Amendment, which was viciously opposed by the southern states, was approved three years after the Civil War between the states.  The Equal Protection Clause of the Amendment was clearly meant to provide civil rights and equal protection for former slaves.  Scalia’s comments in this case and the Voting Rights case, if not poorly worded, were obviously racially biased.  

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Doubts

I am beginning to have doubts about the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  Not because I don’t think it is a worthwhile program, rather because it is having so many problems getting started and is being assailed by the far right Tea Party.  In fact, I don’t think the ACA went far enough, notwithstanding that the proponents got the best they could with this Congress.  The ACA is an “almost” universal health care and the only true universal health care would be single payer, similar to Medicare.

From the beginning politics has kept the ACA from being functional.  The insurance lobby and medical industry lobby have made sure of that.  To appease the Republicans, the administration delayed several major rules until after the November elections and the Republican controlled House blocked funds, followed by a government shutdown. 

Aside from the nut jobs in the Tea Party, the ACA is having problems with the Healthcare Exchange.  More than 30 states refused to set up health exchanges, which required the federal government to assume that already burdened responsibility.  When the federal Healthcare Exchange went active on October 1, millions of citizens were unable to log in and the system is still not operating correctly.  

Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low.

“These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.' ”

Interviews with two dozen contractors, current and former government officials, insurance executives and consumer advocates, as well as an examination of confidential administration documents, point to a series of missteps — financial, technical and managerial — that led to the troubles.

Administration officials have said there is plenty of time to resolve the problems before the mid-December deadline to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1 and the March 31 deadline for coverage that starts later. A round-the-clock effort is under way, with the government leaning more heavily on the major contractors, including the United States subsidiary of the Montreal-based CGI Group and Booz Allen Hamilton.

One person familiar with the system’s development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done. “I’ve heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months,” that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process.  (New York Times -  October 12, 2013)

The inability of the government to get the Healthcare Exchange fully functional will be fuel for the detractors.  But, I don’t think that is the whole story.

When I was unable to get through the Healthcare Exchange I decided to try a website I had been going to in the past to find affordable health insurance - ehealthinsurance.com.  Simply put, once you enter some basic information you are shown various plans available and costs.  What I found different this time was that there are now two choices, depending on if you want quotes for 2013 or 2014.  Using the same information, the quotes for 2014 are almost double the quotes for 2013.

I’m not an insurance expert, but it sure seems to me that the insurance companies are simply raising the rates in 2014 based on the ACA.  Out of curiosity I also entered our projected 2014 retirement income, which resulted in an estimated subsidy from the ACA.

Two things strike me about this.  First, the insurance companies and healthcare industry have lost nothing and given up nothing as a result of the ACA.  They will go about running business as usual, with exorbitant profits without regard to healthcare.  Second, the insurance companies will be passing on the costs of the ACA to those who have no deductions.- admittedly, the middle class and wealthy and those folks will blame the ACA, rather than the insurance and healthcare industry.

Most industrialized nations on the face of the earth have true universal health care that is equitable for everyone.  Most that is, except the good old U.S.A.

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We are in Omaha, as I mentioned in Saturday’s post, where my wife is helping in our daughter’s classroom for a few days. 

We had rain all day yesterday and it is cloudy and windy today.  I had big plans to check out Bass Pro Shop, Cabela’s and Camping World while she was at school, however left home with a sinus infection.  As a result I am staying put in the fiver trying to get better.

Being sick now is bad timing because of plans we have for tomorrow night.  A couple of months ago our daughter gave us tickets to the Omaha Community Playhouse production of Les Misérables.  

I’m doing everything I can to be better by then.  It’s bad enough that I’m not able to go to Bass Pro Shop, Cabela’s and Camping World, but if I miss Les Misérables I’ll really be disappointed.  Guess I’ll take a nap today.

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A Great Man Of History

I was twelve years old in 1962 when the world nearly came to an end.  It was during the so-called cold war with the Soviet Union.  People were building concrete underground shelters and we were learning “duck and cover” in school - as if that would do any good in a nuclear attack.  Were it not for one man we would have likely all been vaporized.

On this date in 1962 a U.S. U-2 spy plane flew over Cuba and took reconnaissance photographs which showed Soviet missiles under construction. 

The next day President Kennedy formed the EX-COMM, a group of twelve of his advisors to address the information.  After a week of intense debate Kennedy imposed a “quarantine” around Cuba to block any more missiles from coming in.  In reality it was a blockade, however Kennedy felt calling it a quarantine was less intimidating.  On October 22 Kennedy went public on television and  announced that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union and demanded that the Soviets remove all of their offensive weapons from Cuba.

During the crisis Kennedy ordered reconnaissance missions once every two hours and on the 25th Kennedy raised military readiness to DEFCON 2.  October 27 was the worst day of the crisis. A U-2 was shot down over Cuba and EX-COMM received a second letter from Khrushchev demanding the removal of U.S. missiles in Turkey in exchange for Soviet missiles in Cuba.  As a result of negotiations, on October 28 Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle the installations and return the missiles to the Soviet Union, so long as the United States would not invade Cuba and remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

But, that is not the whole story.  On October 1 a flotilla of Soviet submarines, B-59, B-36, B-4 and B-130,  left the Soviet Union to support the delivery of missiles to Cuba.  Upon arriving in the area, the flagship B-59 took command.  They had not been in contact with Moscow for a number of days and were monitoring U.S. civilian broadcasts for updates on the U.S. demands.  On October 27 the B-59 was located by U.S. destroyers and had to go deep, far below radio communications, to evade the pursuers.  The destroyers began dropping practice low energy depth charges, attempting to force the B-59 to surface. 

The crew of the B-59 did not know if war had broken out.  The captain of the submarine, Valantin Savitsky, believing that war had started ordered a launch of the nuclear weapon.  Captain Savitsky, Political Officer Ivan Maslennikov and the entire sub flotilla Commander Vasili Arkhipov were given prior approval to launch the nuclear torpedo only if they all three unanimously agreed to do so.  The diesel powered B-59’s batteries were very low and its air conditioning had failed, adding to the problems.  Arkhipov alone opposed the launch and after heated debate persuaded Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow.  The B-59 then returned to the Soviet Union.

The Cuban missle crisis is etched in my memory, even though I was only twelve at the time.  The country was given only information the government felt we needed to know.  It wasn’t until recent years that more of the facts came out, most recently how Commander Arkhipov stopped the launch of a nuclear torpedo and what would of most certainly led to all out nuclear war.  

That one act makes him a great man of history.

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Fall Activities

And now... off of politics for a while and onto some of the mundane.

It is looking like fall here on the farm and the friendly farmer who has crops on the ground surrounding our farmstead started harvesting beans yesterday.  

We only see the farmer several times a year when he is working in the field and once in a while we visit.  We are fortunate that he is a good neighbor.  On a couple of occasions I’ve contacted him about a cow being out or his electric fencer being off and he is very appreciative.  We let him plug his fencer in our outlet and in exchange he lets us dump our tree branches in a gully on his field.

It was cloudy and windy yesterday, which required checking on the baby trees we planted.  

It seems to me you can’t have enough trees on an acreage and at the end of the season I scour the local nurseries for left over trees that may be on sale.  Some are fairly scraggly at the end of the season, but I figure they deserve a chance at life.  The ones we have planted recovered nicely, but do need attention.

Tomorrow we leave for Omaha.  My wife is going to help our daughter in her kindergarten classroom for a few days next week during testing.

  

Usually our daughter has a teacher’s aide, but due to budget cutbacks they eliminated the classroom aide.  On top of that her class size was increased. The school was thrilled to have a certified teacher like my wife helping out.  Coincidentally, the other kindergarten teacher is on maternity leave and my wife’s sister (also a retired certified teacher) is substituting in that class, which adjoins my daughter’s classroom.  I guess you could call it “all in the family.”

We are taking our fifth wheel camper since we will be there most of the week.  That means I will have to find something to do while my wife is at the school.  That shouldn’t be much of a problem since there is a Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shop and Camping World in the area.  

That should keep me entertained for a couple of days.

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Chipping Away

Denying an appeal by Gov. Jan Brewer, a federal appeals court upheld Monday a lower court's block of much of Arizona's controversial SB 1070 law aimed at illegal immigration.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the lower court "did not abuse its discretion" in blocking parts of the law from taking effect last year.

While Monday's decision means only that the law cannot be enforced while it is under review by the courts, it is a further blow to Arizona's attempt to make immigration law. A failed appeal to the Supreme Court would make it unlikely SB 1070 would ever take effect.

The judges agreed with U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton, who issued a preliminary injunction in July preventing sections of SB 1070 from being enforced.

The panel agreed, with one dissenter on some points, that there is sufficient evidence to believe that the blocked provisions unconstitutionally infringe on the federal government's exclusive power to make immigration laws.

The decision is supported by "the threat of 50 states layering their own immigration enforcement rules on top of the Immigration and Naturalization Act," wrote Judge Richard Paez. (Tucson Sentinel)

I had hoped to get off of politics for a while, however politics just keeps happening.

From the initial enactment of Arizona’s anti-immigrants law it seemed clear it was the most oppressive in the nation - often called the “show us your papers law” which set in place racial profiling. 

One of the contentions of the federal government is that Arizona didn’t have the authority to enact immigration law, as Judge Paez said, “on top of the Immigration and Naturalization Act.”  Yes, we need immigration reform, however we don’t need every state creating a patchwork of immigration laws.  That is the responsibility of the federal government (notwithstanding the dysfunction in Washington now).

In Nebraska we have a number of packing plants, which is natural because we have a lot of corn and livestock.  It is an arduous and dangerous job, done by almost exclusively hispanics.  Virtually all are hard working and contribute to the economy.  They are doing jobs that no one else will, no matter what the anti-immigration zealots shout about immigrants taking away jobs from others.   

When I think of immigration reform I am reminded of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1882, which prohibited immigration of all Chinese.  It was to last for 10 years only, however was renewed in 1892 and made permanent in 1902.  It wasn’t repealed until 1943.  After the Chinese built the railroads and assimilated they were resented as taking away jobs from others.  What started out as a spiteful anti-immigration law perpetuated for 61 years. 

It’s good that legal challenges are chipping away at Arizona’s Draconian law.

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Still Trying

Day two and a lot of time used on the mifi and cell phone trying to sign up on the Health Insurance Exchange.  It still won't take the application and says our "identity needs to be verified.

After a long, long wait on hold I finally talked to someone at Experian (why in the world the government is using a credit report company is beyond me) who, after a whole bunch of identity questions assured me that we were good to go on the exchange site.  WRONG!

So, now I'll have to call Experian back and once again try to get them to verify our identity on the exchange and once again start the application process all over again for about the twentieth time.  I don't get how freaking telemarketing companies can find us with junk mail and calls, but I can't get the U.S. government to recognize us on their exchange website.  Everyone else uses our social security numbers to identify us (which is not legal in most cases), but not the health insurance exchange.  

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The "Almost" National Plan

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace is up and running (mostly) at Healthcare.gov and is not without glitches.  Essentially individuals are suppose to be able to access the Marketplace and review the “exchange” for affordable health insurance plans.

The system was initially overwhelmed, obviously poor planning on the part of the government, causing long wait times to access the website or the system locking up.  Since then more servers have been added and access is easier.  However it is lengthy and frustrating.

Frustration #1

In Nebraska the governor (a Republican obviously) took a stand against the law and refused to implement a state exchange.  Thus, we are required to go to the federal exchange without local contacts for help and more people trying to get on the exchange.

Frustration #2

In order to set up an account on the federal marketplace there is an identity process with a number of security questions.  I set up an identity in my name and once I tried to log on it would not accept it.  Once that failed I set up an identity in my wife’s name, however if you make one entry mistake (as I did) you are allowed to complete an application, but it will not accept it since it cannot “verify” your identity. 

Frustration #3

When you have a problem you are suppose to be able to phone the Marketplace, which I did.  After explaining what was happening, I was told I would have to call Experia to get the identity verified.  Huh?!

Here’s the deal...  what is going to happen (or is happening) is that wait times to access the Marketplace, glitches in the system and being locked out for simple entry errors is going to add fuel to the naysayers who are hell bent on killing the ACA.  And, that is unfortunate.

For us, the bottom line is that if we can save any amount under the $1100. monthly we are now paying for health insurance it is worth the effort.  I will keep trying to get on the exchange.  Others will probably give up.  

The solution to this would be single payer (true national health care) with one health insurance card similar to a social security card.  But, that was stopped by the same obstructionists who are now holding the country hostage trying to defund the ACA - the “almost” national health care.

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Dang Straight

Here’s an example of a Nebraska politician who has been in office since 1999.

WASHINGTON— Rep. Lee Terry won't be collecting a paycheck during the government shutdown after all.

The Omaha Republican announced Sunday that he was reversing course and asking to have his paychecks withheld until furloughed federal workers once again receive their checks.

“The other day I made a statement that I would put my needs above others in crisis,” Terry said in his Sunday statement. “I'm ashamed of my comments. It was not leadership. It is not how I was raised. It is not the nature of my character. It is not what I want to teach my sons. I apologize for my hurtful remarks when so many others are feeling the pain of Washington's dysfunction.”

Terry was referring to his response when asked whether he would continue collecting pay during the shutdown. Terry told The World-Herald: “Dang straight.”

Asked about the more than 100 House and Senate members who had announced that they would either have their paychecks withheld during the shutdown or donate their pay to charity, Terry said, “Whatever gets them good press. That's all it's going to be. God bless them. But you know what? I've got a nice house and a kid in college, and I'll tell you we cannot handle it. Giving our paycheck away when you still worked and earned it? That's just not going to fly.”   (Omaha.com)

Nice try attempting to take it back Lee.  Too bad it is already out there that you could give a crap about the rest of us during your government shutdown.  You are part of the "Washington dysfunction" you referred to.  Dang straight, dipshit.

Just one day more...

What a Week

What a week this has been.

I could have blogged about mowing on the farm ...

Or going to town for groceries...

Or fixing another clock...

Or getting the car serviced...

But the week was dominated by a political circus...

Just one day more...