The Soccer Mom Vote

Maybe it's not a game.

Like a lot of people, I'm looking forward to Thursday's Vice Presidential debate with a mixture of amusement and apprehension. I have already committed to "liveblogging" the event on a local message board with a variety of political junkies on both sides of the aisle. From the comfort of our own homes, we will pour a glass of wine, or two, and exchange snarky comments in a form of verbal scorekeeping.

For those who want to play along at home, there's debate LINGO; a cross between business buzzword bingo, and the "Who" parties you had in college while watching the original Grinch.

Already, Democrats, Republicans, and the press have engaged in expectation setting. Will Sarah Palin be a better debater than she has been an interviewee? Will she be wearing her hair down to hide the transmitter feeding her answers?  Will Joe Biden add to his long list of gaffes? The speculation abounds. I wish I could remember who commented last week (Jon Stewart, maybe?) that some people watch the debates for the same reason people watch NASCAR. For the crashes.

Even if you are one of the undecideds for whom this debate might actually matter, there's no denying the Circus Maximus - like atmosphere around these events. And while no one is about to die, whatever happens on Thursday night will doubtless be speared on news shows, blogs, and by the staffs of SNL and Comedy Central.

It's a fair question to ask whether the debates are still meaningful in this day and age. In 1960, they changed the game for Jack Kennedy, but Lloyd Bentsen's quick-witted  "You're no Jack Kennedy"  (audio) ultimately did not help Mike Dukakis on Election Day.

Are we looking for examples of leadership and statesmanship from these televised interactions? Or, as with the election of the current president, is there something else that overrides the oratory?

The nomination of Sarah Palin, her views and interviews, have contributed greatly to the comical atmosphere of this election. She's been called a Weapon of Mass Distraction in many quarters, and has indeed taken the spotlight off, not only McCain, but the very serious issues this election was supposed to be about.

As a country, we should be long past the point of it being acceptable to elect someone based on wanting to have a beer with him, But here we are, in a time of war and economic crisis, still reduced to praising Palin for her folksy delivery and seriously discussing why "elite" is a bad thing.

So we'll watch this debate with our ears open for a good sound bite or a serious misstep; we'll dissect it for the remainder of this week and probably over the weekend. But then can we get back to talking about the serious issues that will face the country, the world, and the next President in the years to come?

Universal Health Care...No Thank You

A few days ago Soccer Mom Bobbi Jo wrote a passionate article suggesting the US should embrace universal health care. If you haven't already, I encourage you to read her article and the comments associated with it. Then come back here and read my article. I think by having both articles here at Soccer Moms we will spark some interesting debate and discussion. Please keep it civil (but then, you always do!).

It wasn't that long ago that people were actually responsible for paying for their own health care. No one expected a government entity to swoop in and save them from themselves. In fact, many of our parents and grandparents probably paid for a doctor visit out of their own pockets. Thomas Sowell writes

This was all before politicians gave us the idea that the things we could not afford individually we could somehow afford collectively through the magic of government. (Read the rest of his article discussing his thoughts on universal health care.)

For me, that really is the heart of the matter. Over the last forty years we've somehow come to the conclusion that we are owed something simply because we live in the United States of America. Every election we are ready and willing to hand over more of our responsibility to the government so we don't have to think about taking care of ourselves.

I would rather see us paying for our medical bills out of pocket and not relying on government for any of our health care issues. Then again, I'm a Libertarian and I'd love to see the government butt out of just about everything. I'm a fan of medical savings plans. These plans allow you to put aside money for your health care issues (including doctor visits, medicine, etc.). John Stossel explains why these savings plans work and actually save us money.

Here's another article by John Stossel outlining why universal health care and its lack of competition just can't work. In fact, he discusses Canada specifically.

As for the debate on S-CHIP? Please read this article from Reason Magazine that explains what that program was really doing and how we could fix it. You'll want to read through to the end; that's where it gets good. It's particularly relevant to Bobbi Jo's assertion that our capitalist mentality should be ditched in favor socialism. is not working (sorry to Bobbi Jo--I misunderstood her assertion!).

Speaking of S-CHIP--you know I have to bring this up--apparently those of us who don't want universal health care are heartless people who don't care about the children. Mark Steyn says it better than I ever could. Please read his article explaining why the real "war on children" is not changing our system for the better now (i.e., jumping off the government gravy train and taking responsibility for ourselves) and leaving it for them to pay for later.

Universal Healthcare is the Best!

hello everyone,

i am literally boiling over about the healthcare issue and must voice some perpective to all my fellow american citizens who have never lived in a country that has universal healthcare. i was born and raised in the usa (most of the time without health insurance) and after falling in love, have lived in montreal for 11 years.

in short, canada takes care of its own on the healthcare game, HANDS DOWN. i luckily grew up "healthy enough" in the states that i didn't end up having a situation like John Q (watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqFiFhGpB34 and tell me what YOU would do as a parent!), or like some of the people in michael moore's new must see film SiCKO. he's taking the film one step further to encourage americans to SPEAK OUT about their own healthcare challenges in the usa to help lobby congress at:(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEFoq_5RbC4

i have to tell you, after living on both sides of the fence (so to speak), that canada's universal healthcare is an AMAZING system that americans could only be so lucky to have! that is the plain, simple truth. those who disagree are most likely either:

a. americans who have never lived in canada themselves &/or are misled by the majority of advertiser-agenda-controlled american media.

(or)

b. canadians who have lots of money and would like to be able to have private healthcare so they don't have to wait in line for a medical check-up... which i hate to say is why alot of americans don't believe in universal healthcare -- because they can afford private insurance (and the preferential treatment that comes with it) and don't want to pay higher taxes to subsidize those who cannot afford it. it is a very selfish POV, if you ask me.

and as the film SiCKO reveals, even having private health insurance in the states is wrought with horrific stories of scandal and greed-driven, inhuman cases of dying humans being left in the lurch by insurance companies unwilling to help them!

to further illustrate my point, i shall kindly refer you to an american tv clip below, which takes the healthcare crisis even one step further... how pharmaceutical companies and government have A LOT to gain by people getting sick in the first place. this is the hard truth and i'm sure is too difficult to swallow for most people. check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHXXTCc-IVg&eurl=http://widget-91.slide.com/widgets/sf.swf

the point of the clip, to me, which mirrors my views in general, is that the problem ultimately comes down to our FLAWED ECONOMIC MODEL in the usa.

capitalism is about greed and profit. until we prioritize the greater common good over the individual on issues of health and education in the usa, nothing will EVER change. even if everyone could afford private insurance, the system is based on giving the least amount of care so insurance companies can make MORE money for their dear shareholders. only universal healthcare can give you a system where a doctor will prescribe what you need, not what an insurance company TELLS him or her that you need...

canada is a socialist society, which means (among other things) that citizens believe that it is a basic, human right to have equal access to healthcare and education. as such, they agree to pay higher taxes to make that happen! and they even throw in public television and the arts as well (ie: our national public broadcaster CBC -- the PBS of canada -- is subsidized by taxpayers!).

it boils down to priorities. if you believe that we are one big family on this planet, then we should put our $ where our mouths are. pay higher taxes and help EVERYONE have these basic rights like the citizens of places like canada, france and sweden.

our children, and our children's children, deserve better than what we have given them so far. PLEASE take the time to speak out about this issue. it is time that americans brought back the humanity in democracy. it is not too late!

i look forward to your feedback! and if you're ever in montreal, let me know and i'll give you a personal tour of our healthcare facilities!

sincerely,

soccermombobbijo

Principle or Pragmatism on Immigration?

The Senate defeated President Bush's attempt at immigration reform after lengthy wrangling and debate. This may be the end of the matter on the Senate floor, but immigration remains a hot topic in the Presidential race.

That improved border security and additional enforcement resources are are needed, there is little doubt. The question that remains is what to do about the estimated 12 million undocumented, illegal, immigrants who are already here.

Border states like Texas, California, and New Mexico have long complained that illegal immigration was putting an unsustainable burden on education and healthcare systems. Many of these people may be working, but neither they nor their employer contribute payroll taxes to the state or federal coffers. The pragmatic thing to do would be to get these workers on the taxrolls. Employers would have to pay a competitive wage, we wouldn't have thousands of people hiding from the census takers, and federal money for education and healthcare could be distributed more realistically.

But efforts to accomplish this were derailed by people seeking to deny "amnesty" to a population they perceived as having broken the law.

And yet no one seem to know what that law really is. The path to citizenship may be one of the most confusing set of rules and regulations in this country short of the tax code. Here in Massachusetts, we had the wife of a missing U.S. soldier threatened with deportation. Senators Kerry and Kennedy intervened, but wouldn't you have thought that marrying a U. S. citizen would have made her one too? Apparently not.

My second internationally adopted child received a certificate of citizenship automatically about three months after he got here, but if I want to get that same document for my first child, I have to fill out yet another form and pay $200.

And then there's my Nicaraguan college roommate, here on a student visa and a full scholarship. Her application for citizenship was denied in the late 80s because she "hadn't done anything illegal." She, like many people who are here illegally, simply chose to overstay her visa until she could find sponsorship.

Attempts to reform this process were not much better - they included a point-based system for determining the merit of a visa application (doctors and MBAs are close to the top of the list - no longer do we really want, the tired, poor and huddled masses), an amendment suggesting that immigrants "go home" for two years before applying to get back in, and apparently no restriction on people who have broken other laws such as drunk driving.

But the biggest question for me was really not addressed in any of the debate in the legislature or in the media. Even if it was realistic to deport 12 million people, how do we handle enforcement in a humane manner?  Raiding a place of employment and dumping immigrants' kids into the foster care system can't possibly be the right answer. Neither can sweeping mothers off the streets while they are bringing their kids to school.

Can't we do better than this?

Mother's Day, 1870

The program at church yesterday noted that Mother's Day began as Mother's Peace Day in a Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe in response to the suffering of the Civil War. She wrote, in part:

"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Mother's Day was made official by Woodrow Wilson in 1912, but the "Peace" was left out of it. Two years later, World War I began.

It's nearly 140 years after Howe's proclamation and we are at war again. While we're no longer under the illusion that running off to war makes a boy a man, we now have women soldiers, many of them mothers themselves. Even if we manage to end the war in Iraq, there is still the multi-headed hydra of Islamic extremism to be dealt with on other fronts. We have not seen the last of ethnic cleansing, and as global population grows and resources become a greater source of conflict, it may be that peace is like Utopia, unattainable or rife with festering resentments. A world without war may be beyond our reach, but certainly we can do better to make armed conflict a last resort. Can't we?.

All on his own, my six-year old says "I don't ever want to be in a war." It makes me think about my role in preparing him for a world I cannot forsee and ultimately will not be a part of. I struggle with a sense of responsibility for making the world my kids inherit a better place than it is today. That involves a role of some kind that goes beyond the sphere of children and family. 

What is that role for you? Volunteer? Teacher? Office holder? Activist? Writer? If parents lead by example, than what is your best example?

Peace.

SHOULD SCHOOLBUSES HAVE SEATBELTS?

Hello everyone! This is my first post as a contributing writer wearing jersey #1. I'm an American ex pat living in Montreal, and have a plethora of interesting anecdotes to share after having lived in Canada for the past 12 years. I'm just so excited that I must take a swig of Gatorade before I can continue... much better.

Ok, so what I am passionate about exploring today is based on a hair-raising experience I had last week as a parent volunteer for my daughter's daycare field trip to a "Cabane a Sucre" (which is French for "Sugaring Off" - it's a big feast in the woods to celebrate the season of taking the maple out of the trees to make maple syrup). I told the daycare my daughter could go only if i was able to be one of the parent volunteers, because I wanted to BE WITH HER in whatever vehicle was taking the group to this event.

It turned out to be a big, yellow bus... which immediately conjured intensely fond memories of my childhood -- waving bye bye to my mother on the farm in Seattle as I boarded the bus for my first day of school...  drawing "Mr. Chinnigan" on the chins of my track & field teammates on the bus home after winning a track meet in Oregon years later in high school... the memories are many and wonderful.

But now I'm a MAMA, with a two year-old daughter that I would instantly throw myself in front of said yellow bus for in a nano second for, in order to protect her fragile, innocent life. And this mama, who also saw the movie "The Sweet Hereafter" (don't ask me to tell you what happened with a yellow school bus -- too traumatic to recount), suddenly finds herself in charge of two toddlers on this big, yellow bus cruising down the highway at 100 kilometeres (that's 55 miles) per hour to a nearby town about 30 minutes drive from Montreal.

Suddenly I feel absolutely helpless, and simultaneously memories are conjured in my minds eye of two major car accidents I endured as a passenger, in vehicles that rolled several times and threw me around like a rag doll because I was not wearing a seatbelt at the time (young and stupid). It was a miracle I survived either accident, but I did. And I still have the muscle memory of those accidents, and the slow motion video of each accident is somehow permanently imprinted in my mind... especially the moment when one vehicle was rolling and i remember my hands touching soft, wet grass (obviously the window had broken out), and the helpless realization that I was going to be thrown outside and crushed by the rolling vehicle. But somehow I was not.

I recount this memory because it would NOT leave my mind as I smiled and sang and giggled with my daughter and her friend that I was "in charge of" as a parent volunteer for this field trip. I could not stop thinking about how I KNEW I could do nothing to protect them if this bus were to get in an accident, that they AND I would be catapulted in violent ways that I knew too well. I could not believe I had allowed myself and my daughter to be sitting on this big, yellow bus and swore I would only do such an event in the future if I followed the bus in my van, where I could seatbelt my daughter into her car seat.

But we were already enroute on the highway, where everyone was singing songs and laughing, so I just prayed like crazy that all would be well. I wondered about the other parents of these toddlers, who let their child go on this trip without them, and I couldn't believe it. I chatted with another mother next to me who told me one child she was in charge of had just told her that her father burned her with a cigarette that morning, and I could see the cigarette burn on her hand as she gazed out the window. My thoughts left the seatbelt issue for a few moments as I fantasized about what I would do to this father to make him pay for such a horrific act upon his innocent daughter. But that's a whole other blog entry...

So when all is said and done, we survived the day and made it home safely, but ultimately, I ask:  SHOULD SCHOOLBUSES HAVE SEATBELTS?

My answer is an unequivocal YES, but then how do you police the kids to actually put them on, and KEEP them on? How do you help them take OFF the seatbelts in an accident to get out, if there is only one bus driver (in most cases of school bus journeys) or just a few adults?

If anyone has a creative solution, I'm all ears!

No New Taxes ... but a whole lot more fees

It's budget season in New England. All over the region, cities, suburbs, and small communities are preparing their budgets for the next fiscal year that starts in July, and except maybe in the wealthiest communities, it is ugly.

The next time you drive through town, to your child's school, or to the park, or past the police station, think of this: your taxes pay for all of those services. And unless you have an all volunteer force, taxes pay the firefighters, they pay for your street to get plowed and your trash service or transfer station.

In large part, it is property taxes that pay for those services, and this makes sense because the community should pay for those services it chooses to offer.

Except:

What if the cost of those services exceeds the community's ability to pay? What then? What services would you cut? Police, fire, teachers, sports?

Or would you raise property taxes, as some choose to do, to maintain those services? Great.

Except:

Let's say the couple next door to you, or the one down the street, are retired. They own their home, they payed off their mortgage long ago, but they are living on a fixed income and a significant tax increase on their property would strain their finances. Should they be forced to move? Sell their house and buy a condo, or move to a retirement community?

And it's not just property taxes, there are now fees to use the community transfer station, or maybe there's a pay by the bag program. The cost of parking in the center of town has gone up as has the fee for a dog license, a building permit, beach parking, In the schools your kids pay to join a sports team, and your system is considering new fees to join the chess club or the debate team.

The community next door to mine can't raise that kind of money from its citizens. Health insurance costs for municipal employees are up 20% this year, and the cost of heating oil for municipal buildings will take a bigger chunk out of their budget than they have had to deal with in years past. They are talking about closing and selling their largest elementary school. They've already closed two firehouses, which is being blamed for the death of a local woman from smoke inhalation when firefighters took nearly twice as long to respond as they would have before the close.

What's happening here?

Politicians love to talk about tax cuts, but they aren't as willing to acknowledge the impact on average taxpayers. You see, when taxes are cut at the Federal level, that doesn't mean that the government stops spending, they simply transfer the burden on to the states in the form of (usually smaller) block grants. Not to be outdone, state governors and legislators want to cut taxes too, and that translates into big cuts in aid to cities and towns. Scrambling to make up the difference, municipalities, particularly those with small business bases, seek to raise property taxes and increase fees.

This puts a much larger burden of generally agreed upon services upon the people who can least afford it; the poor and the elderly.

But when services (and federally mandated programs) are paid for through income taxes, the cost is more fairly distributed based on ability to pay.

Certainly there will be those who would call this "income redistribution," but really it's a sliding scale of contributions to services most of us would agree are needed.

The federal budget is large and complex. It's hard to know where the money goes, and every day that we hear about the cost of the war, pork-barrel projects, and bridges to nowhere, the level of mistrust leads to calls for tax cuts. Less and less money "trickles down" to cities and towns forcing citizens to oppose a 2 or 3% raise for teachers and police.

Municipal budgets are much smaller, and while they are hard to understand at first, they can be eye-opening and educational. They are public documents.

So if you have the opportunity to attend a town meeting, or a city council budget hearing, try to make the time. Learn about the needs of the town you live in and how it collects revenue and where those dollars are spent. And the next time a politician at the state or national level talks about tax cuts, ask yourself how those cuts will hurt your community.