Dependency, nanny state, moderate Democrats

I studied Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin in college as part of my minor in economics.

Control of the media was one of their foremost goals to achieve a successful revolution. Others were control of education and unions, reducing if not eliminating religious organizations (secularism), and fomenting class division in the form of warfare. The last part of the puzzle was building dependency.

How is this country doing?

As we prepare for another tired, taxpayer-funded public-relations campaign from the White House and its complicit media on the overwhelming success of the wealth-redistribution health-insurance scheme known as Obamacare, we need to keep a few things in mind.

A majority of those who have managed to navigate through the three-years-in-the-making website to sign up for Obamacare are the 5 million or so citizens who were kicked off of their 2013 plans because they didn’t meet the one-size-fits-all standards that government bureaucrats have foisted upon us.

It’s because of President Barack Obama’s broken promise: “If you like your plan, you can keep it.”

The real question might be, with this grotesque example of obvious government overreach and incompetence, will the U.S. citizenry begin waking up to the need to downsize Obama’s growing nanny state?

Most of our media outlets have a horrible liberal bias. Perhaps we need to begin a discussion regarding the need for a few moderate Democrats in our U.S. Senate.

Only five leftist votes in that 100-person body give the liberal extremists control of that branch of Congress. With one more liberal in the White House, we have a total of only six persons causing great damage to this country.

President Barack Obama is probably the most arrogant and stubborn person to ever live in that house. He has basically had a free ride through life and comes from the most corrupt Chicago political machine.

Surely we should be able to find a half-dozen sensible moderate Democrats in our Senate who would actually have the courage to defy Obama, who seems to think he is dictator for life.

I am responding to a Jan. 15 letter on Social Security funding and payments.

First, Social Security payments are technically transfer payments. Current payments fund older recipients. At retirement, the payers get their money back (roughly speaking). This is not like the usual tax where the money might fund government services such as schools or roads.

Second, the payout is markedly progressive, with lower-income recipients receiving a greater proportion of the payments relative to their contributions.

There is no rationale to tax incomes above the amount needed to make the transfer payments. Currently, this salary cap is somewhat north of $110,000. The program was not intended to be welfare.

It seems logical that if we as a society desire to ensure a base retirement, basic food and basic medical care, it stands to reason that those who benefit from this would pay a greater percent of their income for these services. If these are necessities, shouldn’t the first dollars one makes go to cover these needs?

I enjoyed the Jan. 12 special section of historic photos and captions. Thanks for sharing.

A recent news story mentioned a girl who had been missing since Thanksgiving, but the case had minimal media coverage.

Why do the local media outlets not dedicate a section of the newspaper or a website to missing persons? We can see every day who died. We do not see who has gone missing.

The local media limit who they report missing even though more than 800,000 children nationally go missing every year. Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield lead Missouri in missing persons.

Do you want to be the person calling to report that your son or daughter has gone missing? If your local news outlet covers local deaths, why not cover the missing?

For more information, go to www.child-safety-for-parents.com/missing-children-statistics.html.

Some think government is too big. Every law, regulation and oversight is because someone took advantage of someone or something.

Governments use tax income to provide services that no one alone could not afford. They include public schools, highways, fire and police, military, research, disaster relief, food, and medical safety and clean water.

Closing down government operations last year just showed a few of the important functions of government.

Government is federal, city, state and county. Each provides services to make our lives better.

Ignorance can be cured by education. If you stupidly think government has no purpose, there is no cure for that. Take away every service government provides, privatize all of these things and, as individuals, you pay for these yourself.

If you want a street in front of your house, you and the guy across the street pay for your little piece. Get an estimate and see how far your taxes go without everyone’s taxes helping.

No public schools? Try paying for private school.

The point of this is that if you don’t like government, vote. But before you do, listen to what candidates say and think for yourself.

Ask for facts to back up their claims.

In case people who lobby for less government and more of the free-market system haven’t noticed, there hasn’t been a peep out of Freedom Industries, the company involved in the leaked chemical, about compensating the people of West Virginia for poisoning their water supply or for that matter about providing fresh water (1-12, A2, “Sickened by spill”).

That has been left up to the local authorities (taxes) and charitable organizations (donations).

Remember Willie Lump Lump, Red Skelton’s character as early as 1954? Red Skelton knew what caused Willie’s “bells and the birds” message of “A flock of them flew over that time.”

It has long been common folk knowledge that multiple concussions could be seriously life-changing (12-4, A1, “Concussion limelight hits KC”). National Football League owners, coaches, trainers and physicians did not know?

Just over a month ago, my wife had major surgery. Three small places on the wound had not healed so her surgeon asked her to visit the wound care center at the hospital.

She visited the center, the wounds were cleaned and covered. We were pleased and a “follow up” appointment was scheduled.

She was told that until the supplies they ordered arrived, we would need some materials for treatment at home. We purchased those on our way home.

The next day a box arrived at our home. It contained, 60 collagen alginate patches (we are still using the first one they sent home from the clinic), 60 gauze pads (that's one of the supplies we had to purchase)and four rolls of tape (the other purchase we made). The supplies we were sent were far more than we could possibly use in weeks of treatment. In two days the wounds have nearly healed, and we have not used anything we were sent.

Medicare Region D and BCBS of KS (C) are paying the bill.In case you are wondering, I do support the Affordable Care Act.

Thank you to the kind gentleman who helped a lost little girl with a violin recently at Crown Center.

We are sorry we didn’t have a chance to properly thank you ourselves, but we were confused about what was happening.

This story was originally published January 16, 2014 at 6:10 PM with the headline "Dependency, nanny state, moderate Democrats."