Timid

Reporting from Sacramento -- With deficit forecasts growing darker by the day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering a plan to slash California's safety net for the poor by eliminating the state's main welfare program, health insurance for low-income families and cash grants to college students.

The stark proposal surfaced in testimony by the administration at a joint legislative hearing Thursday that followed the governor's decision to withdraw a week-old plan to borrow $5.5 billion to help balance the budget.

Awesome.. just awesome...

Isn't it just awesome that in Congress, "single payer" health insurance is "off the table", according to Democrats? Here's another great example of fucking the poor people (or as Doug would call them, the "losers") because the state couldn't manage the budget properly.

Suppose everyone had Medicare... wouldn't that have made it much easier for California to balance it's budget, and not have to risk yanking what health care poor people actually do have?

Where are the people who are thrown off the Medicaid rolls going to get health care? Emergency rooms.. Awesome. They won't actually pay the bill for it.. so the hospitals will have to recoup the money from those of us to do have private health insurance.. which of course our employers will refuse to do, so they'll just push the cost onto us by higher deductibles and co-pays.

When I refer to Obama being timid.. this is what I'm talking about. He's trying to come up with some "compromise" that will do nothing but waste a bunch of money and not actually accomplish anything.

Over half the health care costs paid for in the United States is paid for by the federal government. Make that 100% and no longer do any of the states have to worry about it. Employers don't have to worry about it. Poor people and rich people don't have to worry about it..

But noooooo.. doing the right thing isn't important. Doing something that is a compromise is.

....

A campaign isn't policy. It's a short period of time to impress people. The first 100 days of this administration is as much relief that Bush is gone than anything. I guarantee you that if Obama simply panders to all the special interests, no great oratory is going to prevent his approval ratings from tanking.

No matter what he does, the Loon Brigade will not view his presidency successfully. What matters is what people like me think. It'll be a damn shame if he takes the tremendous opportunity he has been given and simply throws it away being timid.

/update

But Obama is not particularly timid about blatantly violating the Constitution of the United States.

Hopefully the judiciary will slap that down.