The continuous boom of fireworks woke me up last night. As per long-standing tradition I went to bed early New Years Eve. I have yet to regret that old decision.

2009 has a number of unique promises to fulfill. Whether or not it will is yet to be seen. We could either be witnessing the dawn of one of our most prosperous decades beginning with 2010, or the inexorable advance of Armageddon; the potential swing of the pendulum is that wide.

President-elect Obama has already shown himself to be less of a puppet of the liberal left than a lot of pundits feared. His willingness to work with people his typical constituency view as blood enemies shows an inner core of character I was unable to see during the campaign. It will be interesting to see how his middle-income tax cut fares and what, if implemented; it will do for the economy. American big business has become quite reactionary when asked to share their plunder. I personally know of instances where a business owner has actually taken steps that harmed his credit rather than reduce his own personal income to save the business his father began.

As is typical to the Middle East, the millennium-old conflict between the sons of Abraham rages on, but for the past several hundred years the fault lies on Ishmael’s side, not on Isaac’s. I have yet to get a real handle on the problem with the Palestinians. Their heritage is Jordanian, not Israeli. They hail from southwestern Jordon, not from the western side of the Jordon River. Not one accomplishment toward bettering humanity or society, or even themselves can be attributed to any of their disparate groups, and yet the world seems intent on blaming Israel, the real victim, for the Palestinians’ troubles. It seems to me that when someone gives you thousands of acres of arable land, you develop it; you don’t spend all your time developing weapons. The followers of the Babylonian moon god allah don’t care about logic, obviously.

Because of the vast Democrat sweep of nearly every significant office, the Reid/Pelosi cabal has been clamoring to move even further toward socialization. They envision American healthcare as being a mirror of what is offered in Canada. There are so many errors in that form of judgment that space is simply not sufficient to even cover a tiny percentage, but let’s just look at a couple right now. Both Pelosi and Reid happen to be independently wealthy. Over the years I have noticed that those who proclaim the socialist agenda to be the best are often the least generous with their own wealth when they have it. Both Pelosi and Reid share the trait of being dictatorial. They do not work well as the member of a decision-making team; they have a drive to be the one and only decision maker. Every socialistic leader in our world’s history has shared the same trait.

In Canada, it is true, you can see a doctor without paying a co pay. Of course, you have already paid 60% in taxes and had to wait for upwards of half a year while your condition grew worse, but that $20 didn’t leave your wallet. As in the UK, Canada’s health system has morphed into a two-tier system. Those who can afford to pay for extra privilege, get it and the government, used to privilege, does nothing to halt the trend. Do you really think that if it came to it that Reid or Pelosi would be waiting in line with you to see a doctor?

About a year ago my humble house was worth about $250,000. Now it is worth about $150,000. I have actually worked to improve the property, but the price went down. Fortunately the taxes also went with the price. Some economists are warning of hyper-inflation while others are screaming about the coming depression. I think a different scenario is possible, if Uncle Sam will get out of the way. My house was never actually worth a quarter of a million. It simply is too small and in too normal of a location for that price. As with all the other homes around my neighborhood, it was caught up in a short term economic frenzy and far too many scam artists got into a feeding frenzy. The balloon has burst and now things are beginning to stabilize...as long as greed is kept out of it. Gas prices are just about where they really belong along with a great many other commodities. If those businesses who failed were actually allowed to fail, better run companies would take their place. It has happened before and it will happen again. Simply because the owner of a business has a friend in Washington, it does not mean that my taxes can be used to cover up his failure. At least it shouldn’t mean that.

So, welcome to 2009. It should be an interesting year.

 Liberal politicians on both sides of the aisle want to control every aspect of the average citizen’s life. How you think, work, play, worship, and relax, those should not be your choice...not according to the liberals. The elite in the liberal camp firmly believe they are far better suited to make those decisions, and the liberal drones agree with them. To the drone, it is far easier to shift the responsibility over to the government.

Responsibility. To the liberal mindset, if you add the word “self” before responsibility, you are speaking blasphemy. A populace of independent, self-reliant citizens is a vision of unspeakable horror to the liberal. One reason is that the independent need no one to tell them what to do. The independent make their own decisions. They deal with problems as they come along and they succeed or fail on their own. They are the ones who make the fundamental choices about their own lives. The liberal elite want to remove that ability, even to the point of telling you how to travel or at what temperature your home will be kept.

Pelosi, Reid, Dodd…to the liberal elite, the pinnacle of established wisdom...to the true conservative, a new axis of evil; a tri-liberal committee. Because of the policies and laws these three stooges have put in place, the ability to be self reliant has become an endangered dream. One of the favorite tools of the liberal is healthcare, specifically the arena of pain management.

Pain is a reality of the human condition. Bruises come with the territory. Pain is nature’s way of telling us to “not do that again”. Unfortunately, sometimes things go wrong and pain becomes a constant unwelcome presence in our lives. The pain management specialty is made up of doctors who have studied and in some cases perfected ways to allow the pain sufferer to live a functional life while dealing with that pain. Liberals somehow think that is wrong. They point out the tiny percentage of patients who act irresponsibly as an indication of the whole. Rush Limbaugh’s problem with pain medication is one of their prime examples. They ignore the fact that Mr. Limbaugh has dealt with that problem and seems to be doing quite well right now. To the liberal, a middleclass working American dealing with chronic pain while supporting themselves and their family is as much a danger to society as a meth addict in the gutters of skid row.

The Las Vegas Sun, the liberal newspaper in my area, had an article this morning about a doctor who prescribed pain medication in an irresponsible manner. Well, doctors happen to be human, and humanity does act irresponsibly, sometimes more often than not. That does not mean that in order to solve that problem, you eliminate the ability of those doctors who do prescribe responsibly to help their patients. If you are liberal, that is exactly how you deal with the problem. You punish the patients. You create laws that make it illegal to even think about doing what caused the actual harm. Punish the wrongdoer only? What do you think we are, conservatives?

The best way to solve the healthcare problem and to lower costs is not by adding innumerable layers of regulation, but by making a few responsible changes to how things are done.

One: remove the profit motive. It is fundamentally un-American for a few people to become wealthy off of the misery of others. A hospital or a health insurance company can offer their employees a very good living while supplying their patients with high quality products and services. The Mayo Clinic is a prime example of this. In healthcare the profit motive is what prompts the greedy to order their employees to eject patients from their hospital rooms the second the coverage lapses, or to force nurses to use needles on more than one patient. The profit motive is what causes insurance carriers to refuse contracted benefits on the flimsiest of excuses while granting their board members multimillion dollar bonuses. If you think these examples are absurd, every one of them happened right here in Nevada over the past few years and every one of them was defended by the liberal elite in my legislature. One of the chief supporters of the companies that committed these atrocities was Nevada Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, the recipient of the Consumer Advocate award. Now that is irony. To the media, it is not what you do that counts, it is what you say.

Two: allow doctors and patients to develop a true working relationship where prescribed medications and procedures are concerned. A doctor has enough to do without spending additional hours filing multiple copies of reports to faceless bureaucrats. Don’t remove avenues of help simply because some people may abuse the medicine. People can be idiots, but don’t punish the responsible for the actions of the irresponsible. And don’t make medications that work unavailable for the same reason.

Three: pull the weeds. Sometimes people turn out to be bad, and that includes physicians. The liberal elite think that the best way to deal with that problem is to tighten the regulations so that it is harder to do the bad things. This is the way they deal with everything. The ridiculous gun laws are an example. Making it harder for a doctor to do the job only makes it hard on the patients. If a physician violates the oath that begins with “do no harm”, and it turns out that this was done intentionally, yank the license. There will be plenty of candidates to fill those shoes. We will not have a shortage of doctors if the profession is regulated in a responsible manner. We will though if we allow the liberal mindset to run our lives.