PRINT EDITION: May 7, 2005

MY TWO CENTS WORTH

TERRY SCHIAVO’S HEALTH CARE COSTS – Regardless of which side of the Terry Schiavo debate you’re on, it’s interesting to see where the money came from to pay her medical bills. Almost $800,000 came from a medical malpractice case, but the rest came from Social Security disability benefits, Medicaid, and a corporate hospice fund for indigent patients. The bottom line was that the "opportunity" to even debate the case was partially made possible by taxpayer dollars. If that opportunity was available to Michael Shiavo, Terry’s husband, and Bob Schindler, Terry’s father, then one must assume that fairness would dictate that the same publicly financed opportunity must also be extended to every family in America facing a similar situation. Right now, last-year-of-life expenses are eating up 26% of Medicare resources and 25% of Medicaid’s, according to the Federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Extending the "Shiavo opportunity" to every family in the country would certainly increase those numbers, but conversely Congress just voted in a $10 billion cut of Medicaid’s budget beginning in 2007, so the dollars won’t come from there any longer. Since the vast majority of families will not have resources like $800K malpractice awards their Shiavo opportunity may involve inevitable bankruptcy, but Congress recently voted to make even that option unavailable to most average citizens. Does this mean that if you favor extending the Shiavo opportunity to all then you absolutely must be in favor of national health care insurance? And isn’t that a doozey of a philosophical dilemma for compassionate conservatives?

U.S.-INDICTED CHINESE COMPANY GETS IRAQ GUN DEAL – Say what? The U.S. Army has awarded a Chinese company, under a 30-count indictment for smuggling 2,000 AK 47’s into the country, a $29 million contract to provide weapons to the Iraqi army. Hold the phone. Isn’t the Bush administration pressing the Europeans to maintain an embargo on high-tech arms sales to China? Didn’t China oppose the U.S. mission in Iraq? Don’t we have U.S companies or companies based in countries that are our allies that could produce the same weaponry? Isn’t China the country cozying up to Iran and Sudan, two countries now under U.S. sanctions, to cut a deal for their oil? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding "yes." This is just plain disheartening. To think our soldiers have died in Iraq so our de facto adversaries can come in and scoop up a profit is monumental slap in the face to our troops.

PRESIDENT BUSH HOLDS HAND OF SAUDI PRINCE – I don’t know what everyone is getting so excited about. So what if President Bush held hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Would you rather have seen the video of Dubya groveling at the feet of the Prince begging him to sell us his oil? You might think all this was about as humiliating as it could get until you noticed that big knife sticking out of the President’s back courtesy of Vice President Cheney’s energy industry buddies.As the President pandering to the Saudis (i.e. "meanwhile, not back at the ranch"), Exxon Mobile was announcing a record $7.86 billion first-quarter profit, the company's biggest ever in a first quarter and also the fifth-largest for any U.S. company in any quarter. Plus, we learned that since 2003 the world’s four largest oil companies (Exxon Mobile, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Group, ChevronTexaco) have earned a combined $97 billion, including $23.8 billion in the first three months of this year. It’s a profit so obscene that industry analyst Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Company said: "I’ve been following the industry for 18 years and I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like they’re printing money." All this hilarity only costs you $2.50 every time you buy a gallon of gas, which any oil company bigwig would tell you is cheap entertainment.

GOP SETS TRAP WITH DELAY AS BAIT – Everyone is wondering why the Republican leadership caved in and agreed to retreat on the ethics rules designed to shield majority Leader Tom DeLay. Under the old rules, which will now be in place, a full investigation of DeLay’s alleged unethical behavior will now be possible. The explanation is as simple; pay attention Democrats. It’s a trap! And the Dems, God love them, are jumping into it like an Atkins diet escapee doing a half-gainer into a vat of gravy. The Dems know that DeLay took trips financed by lobbyists and that he’s an easy target. What they are failing to recognize is that since 2000 members of Congress have taken 5,410 privately financed trips with a value of $16 million. Republicans took 2,375 of those, but the Democrats took 3,025 (10 were taken by independents). Out of 600 members of Congress, DeLay only ranked 114^th in number of trips taken and 28^th in value of those trips. You just know Republican strategist Karl Rove is already collecting dirt on prospective Democratic presidential candidates as we speak. The Dems will never know what hit them.

5-SECOND RULE DEBUNKED – You know the old truism: It’s OK to eat food off the ground as long as it’s picked up before 5 seconds elapses. Well, researchers at the University of Illinois have now proven that each gram of dropped food can collect 10,000 colony-forming units of bacteria in those 5 seconds on the floor. Yuk! Here Fido, here boy!

PRESIDENTIAL DOLLAR COINS PROPOSED – As if Congress doesn’t have enough real work to do, they’ve been spending time putting together a proposal to mint dollar coins again. Americans have pretty much indicated that they hate the idea of lugging around more metal, but the folks in Washington won’t take no for an answer. This time they figure if they put the likenesses of all our presidents on the coins, at the rate of four presidents a year, citizens will embrace the dollar coin concept. Right, just what I want, my pants falling down because my pockets are full of Millard Fillmores. I can’t wait to be in line at the grocery store while some right-winger refuses to take Bill Clinton dollars in change and demands Ronald Reagan coins instead.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com . Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews .

Copyright © by NeffZone Services. All rights reserved.