Counting On It

DAY TWO OF OBAMACARE, and we're all still here, at last report, so perhaps the disaster can be contained. All over the United States, people are awakening in their sleeping bags, camped out outside whatever buildings have computers inside, hoping to log on, and get some obamacare. They're still uncovered, but, they might hope, not for long. Didn't work out yesterday, the line was too long, maybe it will today. It would be nice if tea party volunteers would walk through the encamped masses, handing out styrofoam cups of good, strong, hot, black coffee. Wouldn't hold my breath, though. Heavens, what a mess. Websites crashing, people being told to try again later....you'd almost expect the private sector public corporations to swoop down, and scoop up all these uninsured peons, before the gummit gets 'em...The trillion dollar question is, and shall long remain: will socialized medicine work in Amarica? Does socialism ever work, other than,say, as a way of paving the roads, and building and maintaining sewer and water systems? What about Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? Do they work well? Do they work well enough? They aint gonna work perfectly, we know that already. But since all of them have been around now for decades, we ought to be able to arrive at a conclusion, not a million conslucions, but a single, irrefutable conclusion, based on hard facts, not ideology. Bear in mind that half of the sixteen trillion dollar American national debt consists of the military budget. Do we the american people need to be the most powerful nation on earth, or do we need to spend money on the health of millions of our citizens? Or maybe a little bit of both. Either answer can be vigorously defended. Perhaps we can agree that we have too much government, and too little free market productivity. Even the socialists should arrive at this conclusion. Long live libertarian socialism! We could start by eliminating government funding for public television and radio, thus entirely privatizing those wonderful culture icons which give us most of what little passes for intelligent content in American media, and Obama himself had a good idea a few years ago: sell off the Tennessess Valley Authority, privatize it. Now is the time for all good socialists to accept the necessity for free enterprise!What about privatizing to postal service? Somebody could make a killing! Perhaps there will come a time when all good corporate capitalists will acknowledge the need for government, to provide gentle, unsuffocating regulation of the necessary jungle of the free market. Don't count on it though.