EdSteinInk.com

The Obstructionists

Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they will do everything in their power to prevent, or at least slow down, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, known derisively as Obamacare.

Let’s take this apart. The ACA is the law of the land. Even the obstructionist-in-chief John Boehner had to admit that after Obama won reelection. It will be implemented, either efficiently or slowly and painfully. The GOP has chosen the latter. Aside from displaying a reflexive contempt for Obama and anything he stands for, the only reason to go down this road is to to score political points for the next election cycle.

The other choice, of course,  would be to help implement the law so that the maximum number of Americans might enjoy its many benefits, and the inevitable tweaks to the program might be made expediently. That’s not the choice the Republican party has made. Instead, they’ve chosen to make the law as unworkable as possible, thus preventing as many citizens as they possibly can from getting health care. In some cases, this will mean confusion, delay, inconvenience and frustration, which will, in their calculus, benefit them at the polls.

In other cases—likely many cases—it will mean that people in desperate need of life-saving procedures and medicines will be denied the care they need. They will die. 

The question we should be asking is how many American lives will the GOP sacrifice to embarrass the president and his party.

CU Hires a Conservative

The University of Colorado at Boulder on Wednesday named Steven Hayward as the Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy, a newly invented position and the first of its kind anywhere. I’m not making this up.

Mr. Hayward, a former fellow at the Heritage Foundation, received his doctorate in American Studies from the Cleremont graduate school. His one-year residency is being funded by $1 million in private donations, including one from Denver banker Earl Wright.

I’m all for it. We desperately need someone who can help our impressionable young people understand contemporary conservative thought. I’m especially hoping that Professor Hayward will be able to explain to his students how the United States can keep its edge while pursuing conservative budget policies that require cutting billions from higher education budgets, depleting the resources of public schools, defunding early childhood education and gutting federal scholarship programs, while making sure that folks like Mr. Wright can keep enough of their money to hire their own conservative professors.

Maybe his hiring can serve as a model for luring educators to campus in the age of austerity: just get rich folks to pick and choose what they’d like to be taught and who they’d like to teach it and then to underwrite the salaries of their preferred professors. That way the university would be spared the arduous task of hiring and the public the burden of paying. That would certainly transform education.

And perhaps Mr. Hayward will be able to tell us why it’s worth a cool million to bring him here, when conservatives have been howling for years about all that wasteful spending on public education.

I want to be at that lecture.

Paul Ryan Balances My Budget

Paul Ryan is absolutely right. Every family needs to balance its budget, and the government does, too, although except for the constant squabbling, it’s hard to see how the government is like my family.

By all accounts, unless you’re listening to anyone who’s not a House Republican, Ryan has put forth a “serious budget,” so I thought it ought to make a good blueprint for balancing my family budget.

To start with, making more money is off the table. Asking for a raise is out of the question. According to Ryan, that’s absolutely the wrong way to go about it, and because he’s an expert, I’ll just have to take his word for it. Making more money would mean taking it from my rich employer, who has way better uses for it than I do. If I took it, it would leave him less to put back into the economy, and that would seriously inhibit growth. So, my only choice is to cut spending.

Where to start? Health care would be an excellent choice. By not paying my health insurance premiums, which in 2014 means refusing to fund Obamacare, I can cut about $1000 a month from my budget. And, here’s the great thing: if I follow Ryan’s budget closely, I can also count the savings I would have had if I’d paid for my Obamacare! Make that another $500 a month. I know it seems somehow wrong to count both, but who am I to question such an expert?

Next, I really need to stop funding my kids’ education. I have a real weakness for the little darlings, I admit, but it’s time for a little tough love, and we all need to be self-reliant.

Too bad they’re older and I can’t gain any savings from not making their school lunches any more. When I think of all the money I wasted on that over the years! And what a fool I was to pay for their early childhood education. Who in his right mind would fund kindergarten when the budget is so out of whack?

I can stop helping them with their retirement funds, though. I wish I’d stopped doing that years ago. I thought I was so smart opening up IRAs for them when they had summer jobs. Little did I know that I was wrecking the economy. That Ryan guy doesn’t miss a thing, does he?

I do feel bad about their health insurance. Both kids were on my plan before I cancelled it. I’ll replace what I was spending on them with a block grant. It won’t actually be enough for them to buy their own insurance, and over the years it most likely won’t keep up with inflation, but Ryan and I are on a mission here. I just hope the kids use it wisely and don’t spend it on frivolous things like food or clothing.

I’m definitely going to stop giving money to charitable causes. Giving money to the poor is just bad economics; they bleed the system and they don’t employ anyone. Instead, I’m going to donate that money to my boss, who will use it to hire people, theoretically. I haven’t seen him actually doing that lately, but if he stockpiles enough of it, he’s going to have to start hiring people sooner or later, right? That’s the Ryan theory, anyway, and I’m sticking to it.

Now to my own retirement plan. Social Security will be insolvent in just a few years unless we fix it, and asking the rich to pay a little more into the system is a non-starter in the Ryan/Stein plan. Therefore, I need to scale back my expectations. For the good of the country, I’m going to stop funding my IRA and 401(k), and just plan on living on less when I stop working, which, in my new budget, will be when I’m 78.

Well, that about covers it. Thanks to the Ryan blueprint, my family budget is now balanced.

Remind me again why I’m not asking for a raise.

What’s Next

With the conservative majority on the Supreme Court signaling that they will vote to end key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, a number of organizations are contemplating challenges to other laws they view as no longer necessary.

“The Court’s majority is saying that the Voting Rights Act is so successful that it’s not needed any longer,” said a spokesman for the League of White Southern Voters. “We agree with the Court that governments in the Deep South with an unbroken history of egregious racial discrimination will no longer discriminate as soon as sanctions are lifted.

“We’re just worried that the Court won’t go far enough. We’re hoping to persuade the Justices to throw out the entire act, and not just Section 5 covering southern states.

“It’s just preposterous in this day and age to think that any states, northern or southern, will go on a binge of Gerrymandering, discriminatory voter ID restrictions, absurdly short registration periods, understaffed vote centers and inconvenient poll hours in an attempt to discourage the minority vote. We haven’t seen any of those shenanigans since way back in November of 2012.”

The National Association of Sweatshops announced that “we are seriously considering asking the Court to follow its own logic and get rid of the hopelessly antiquated child labor laws. Ater all, it’s been decades since children were forced to work, proving that the law is no longer necessary. And that goes for the forty-hour work week and overtime laws, too. They worked so well they’re unnecessary.”

The American Polluters Alliance agreed. In a press release yesterday, the group stated, “The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act have been so successful at protecting the nation’s environment, we simply don’t need them any more.

“There’s a lot of evidence to prove that once these laws take effect, they outlive their usefulness. Look at the banking industry. Congress relaxed the regulatory burden on the financial sector years ago, and almost nobody in the industry has been prosecuted for any wrongdoing since. Doesn’t that prove our point?”

Added a spokesperson for the Corporate Legal Protection Council, “Look how successful workplace safety rules have been. Given the amazing decline in deaths and injuries ove the years, isn’t it obvious that we don’t need those rules? I think it’s pretty clear from the results that corporations absolutely can be trusted to put their employees’ health and safety above profits.”

“The Obama administration is living in the past,” read a statement from the National Association of CEOs. “He’s asking to raise the minimum wage at a time when minimum wages have been shown to be astonishingly effective at preventing millions from falling into hopeless poverty. Why on earth would we want to continue a program that’s so outlived its usefulness? Does anyone honestly believe that American CEOs wouldn’t voluntarily pay people a decent living wage without some law forcing us to?

“We look forward to working with other like-minded groups to finally get rid of these useless, costly and burdensome laws which no longer have a place in 21st Century America.”

Sequester Happens

With automatic budget cuts looming on Friday, the war of words between President Obama and Republicans intensified.

Mr. Obama traveled to Newport News, Virginia, where he warned that thousands of shipbuilding jobs would be jeopardized by the continuing budget standoff.

Republicans, meanwhile, accused the president of playing politics and trying to scare the American people rather than working to solve the impasse.

“If the president were serious,” House Speaker John Boehner claimed, “he’d come up with a plan to target these cuts so that only the poor, minorities, the unemployed, the sick and inner-city school children are affected. Instead, the middle class is going to suffer because of his inaction.”

“The House has put forth reasonable plan to spare all but the most disadvantaged the worst effects of the budget cuts,” added Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the No. 3 House Republican, “but this president insists on policies that also impose burdensome new taxes on millionaires and billionaires. It’s a complete waste of time. He knows this is a non-starter.”

Added Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, “We’d like to make a bipartisan deal, but we’re prepared to let the sequester take effect rather than give in to the president’s outrageous demands that the burden of balancing the budget be shared by the richest Americans.”

“Besides which, the American people are too smart to be frightened by Mr. Obama’s scare tactics,” said Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) “As you know, I’m a budget expert, and I’ve worked the numbers. The sequester simply will not be nearly as bad as the president wants you to believe.

“Tonight I can assure the American people that even if nothing whatever is done to prevent the budget cuts from happening, not one single billionaire will be harmed.”

Cameras in the Court

The justices of the Supreme Court have rejected the idea of video coverage of arguments before the court, explaining that Americans would be incapable of comprehending what they were seeing.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor justified the decision, saying, “very few of them understand what the process is.”

“It’s not because they’re stupid, although they are,” growled Justice Antonin Scalia,” it’s just because we’re so incredibly much smarter.”

“For example,” said Justice Samuel Alito, “I doubt one percent of Americans could follow the arcane logic that led to the inescapable legal conclusion that corporations, even though they are soulless, lifeless artificial legal constructs, are actually people.”

“Or,” chimed in Justice Anthony Kennedy, “that money and speech are identical as far as the law is concerned. It doesn’t make sense to the average person that a corporation can secretly stuff unlimited cash into a campaign coffer, and that’s the same thing as some poor schmuck standing on a street corner trying to get someone’s attention. People would just be confused trying to unravel the arguments if they saw us in action.”

Chief Justice John Roberts asserted, “it would have created unneeded controversy at a very emotional time if the voters actually saw how we made George W. Bush president, despite some pretty compelling evidence that Al Gore actually won. They wouldn’t have understood the highly abstruse reasoning behind that decision. They might have concluded that it was a completely unwarranted and unprecedented decision by a court that arrogantly and recklessly inserted itself into partisan politics, instead of the finely-reasoned determination that in fact it was.

“Plus,” he continued, “it wouldn’t have served this court or the nation if people had been able to see the look on Scalia’s face when I voted in favor of Obamacare. You really wouldn’t have wanted that showing up on Youtube.”

Alito wondered, “would you honestly want the public to see Clarence (referring to Justice Thomas) just sitting there day after day never saying a word? They might conclude that he’s only there as a token black who reliably votes with the conservative bloc. What would that do to the public perception of the court as a legitimate body?

“For that matter,” he went on, “I don’t think anyone outside this room wants to watch Scalia when he gets rolling on one of his tirades. I love the guy like a brother, but the full Antonin when he goes off is hard even for me to take.”

“Not all of us are all that photogenic, either,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “People might spot Ruth Ginsburg and wonder why there’s a garden gnome on the bench.”

“So,” Roberts concluded, “we’re not going to televise the proceedings of this court. When we really thought about it, the negatives so outweighed the positives, it was a no-brainer. When it came right down to it, it was as easy as refusing to stay an execution.

“All eight of us agreed. No cameras. Justice Thomas didn’t say anything, as usual, but we assume he concurs.”

A Comet Tale

Only weeks before the almost certain extinction of all life on Earth, Senate Democrats were unable to muster enough support to force a vote on President Obama’s nominee to lead his proposed Comet Defense Task Force.

A visibly angered Obama vowed to take the fight straight to the people. At a speech in a field outside Dubuque, Iowa, at the very the spot where the massive comet is expected to strike, Mr Obama said, “With a rock a million times the size of the one that hit Russia the other day heading right for us,” he said, “it’s time for Congress to put aside partisan concerns and act. The American people deserve a vote.”

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) led the charge against former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama’s choice for the post. “We need more information about this guy,” Graham said. “For instance, why hasn’t he come clean about Benghazi?”

Reminded that Gates was not in government at the time of the attack on the U.S. embassy, Graham responded, “Is that why he got out? We need to know a lot more before we let him take such an important job. The lives of every American are at stake.”

Ted Cruz, the firebrand junior senator from Texas, was equally adamant. “How much contact did this Gates guy have with Martians before this comet suddenly appeared? How often did he communicate with our interstellar enemies?”

Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner threatened to withhold funding for the task force. “My caucus has two main concerns. Many of us are deeply skeptical of writing a blank check for something that might not even work at a time of crushing deficits. We won’t fund this boondoggle unless every penny is offset by spending cuts.”

“And,” Boehner added, “a significant number thinks this comet is God’s will, and it would be wrong to try and thwart it. And the concerns of other members need to be addressed before we agree to move forward.”

Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) vowed, “Not one dime if illegal immigrants aren’t specifically exempted.” Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) said he would refuse to vote to fund comet prevention if gays were included in the protection. 

That sentiment was echoed by televangelist Pat Robertson, who said, “You just knew something like this would happen when they let homosexuals in the military.”

NRA head Wayne LaPierre demanded that private citizens be given immediate access to nuclear weapons and the missiles to launch them. “Those anti-gun zealots in Washington would rather let you die than allow you to defend yourself,” he said. “The Second Amendment was written to give Americans the firepower they need to shoot that thing out of the sky.”

An exasperated Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “This is insane! The longer we wait the closer that thing comes, and the harder it will be to deflect or destroy!”

John Cornyn (R-TX) countered, “Says who? A bunch of so-called scientists trying to scare us with their end-of-the-world hokum. The same bunch that’s behind the global warming hoax, I bet.”

Barbara Boxer (D-CA) bemoaned the loss of comity in the normally staid Senate. “This is a sad day. This is the first time in history that a nominee for such an important post has been filibustered.”

“It’s not really a filibuster,” John McCain (R-AR) claimed. “It’s a temporary halt in the proceedings that just LOOKS exactly like a filibuster. We’ll allow a vote after the recess.”

With the Senate not scheduled to reconvene until three days before the comet hits, there is little likelihood that there will be enough time to prevent the total annihilation of the planet. 

Conservative Republicans were unmoved. “It might not be such a bad thing just to let it happen,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK). “If the world ends, so will the deficit.”

The Next Pope

Within minutes of the shocking announcement that Pope Benedict XVI would resign, the betting on who would be the next Pope began. The early line in Vegas made Cardinals Marc Ouellet of Canada and Peter Turkson of Ghana prohibitive favorites.

Ouellet, the head of the Congregation of Bishops, would be a logical choice given his place in the heirarchy. Turkson, if elected, would be the first black Pope, and would certainly appeal to the fast-growing Catholic population in Africa. Both men share the outgoing Pope’s extreme conservative leanings, which have alienated many Catholics in Europe and the United States.

Come on, guys, way too predictable. It’s time for the Church to think outside the box. Pope Benedict is the first Pope to resign in six centuries. If you’re going to go back to old traditions, why not go all the way back to the beginning? All the early disciples were Jewish. Saint Peter, the founder of the Church, was Jewish. Why not a Jewish Pope? 

Look, at a time when the Catholic Church seems focused on losing as much influence as possible in the West, what better way to accelerate the trend than to appoint a rabbi as Pope? Let’s face it: nobody listens to rabbis.

Oh, sure, virtually every congregation has one, and rabbis perform essential functions like giving sermons and officiating at bar mitzvahs and weddings and funerals, but no matter how many times they ask their congregants to keep kosher and not work or shop on the sabbath or fast on Yom Kippur, they’re pretty much universally ignored.

Also, because the rabbinate doesn’t answer to a central authority, priests under a Jewish Pope would be a lot more free to deal with the individual needs of their own congregations without the heavy hand of Rome interfering all the time. So each individual congregation would be free to ignore its own rabbi rather than having to go to the trouble of tuning out the entire Vatican.

Finally, a Jewish Pope would most likely be married. Getting rid of the absurd prohibition against priests marrying would go a long way toward putting the whole ugly pedophile scandal to rest for good. Rabbis, unlike priests, actually have some experience with marriage and sex, and a Jewish Pope would not have a lot of patience with priests who torment boys. He would understand that that’s a job reserved for Jewish mothers, and that the abuse should be entirely emotional, not physical.

I know this is a long shot, but I think my idea is a winner. 

Assuming, though, that this is not going to happen, I’m reduced to pondering how the Vatican will announce the election of Cardinal Turkson, if he’s the choice. Will it still be white smoke, or will they dare reverse the tradition and announce the first black Pope with black smoke?

Just wondering.

Freshly Squeezed 2/6/13

I came up with the idea of Grandpaman a few months ago, but didn’t do anything with it until now. He’ll be making occasional appearances in the strip from now on. I love the idea of grandparents who, because of their special relationship with their grandchildren, can do things that parents can’t.

(Source: )

Targeting Americans

A newly-released Justice Department “white paper” laying out the legal argument by the Obama administration for the targeted killing of Americans has come under scrutiny by alarmed members of Congress.

The undated and unsigned document asserts that it would be lawful to kill a U.S. citizen who poses an “imminent threat” to the United States. To date only one American, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, has been killed under the authority claimed in the memo.

“That may be true so far,” said a member of the United States Senate, who refused to be identified, “but the administration seems to be claiming unprecedented authority to act against American citizens. Under certain circumstances, you could see how the broad powers they’re asserting might include the right to shoot members of Congress.

“Heck, we’ve done more to endanger the American people than Al Qaeda ever did.”

When informed of the senator’s comments, Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly replied, “Hmmm. Interesting.”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t deeply concerned,” said a ranking member of the House minority, who also asked that his identity be kept secret. “The way this body handled the debt crisis, our constant attempts to destroy the safety net, our refusal to deal with global warming or gun control, our continued opposition to health care reform—if all that doesn’t qualify as an imminent threat to the safety of Americans, I don’t know what would.”

His remarks were echoed by a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.

“We do not believe the Obama administration can just claim the authority to kill Americans without due process of law.”

“There’s no telling where this could lead,” he added. “It might start with Al Qaeda, but there’s a dangerous slippery slope here. Under the broad language of that memo, you could make a pretty darn good argument for blowing up the entire House.

“Then again, if something unfortunate happened to that weasel Eric Cantor, I doubt the Speaker would shed too many tears.”