Conundrum #1024 & #1025

The Solon Slant is a blog created to allow me to vent in a somewhat more positive way than say, going postal (if I may borrow from a government offering to our vocabulary.)

I observe and report that some of the very good intentions (to be too kind) of government, politicians, do-gooders and the like end up having an almost perfect, and symetrically opposite effect; to wit (short list):

• Health care - government involvement vis-a-vis our wonderful (and I might add, simple) tax code has led to a health care system that delivers horribly uneven care delivery; the absolutely delicious irony that the uninsured (and often under-employed or unemployed) are billed for medical care and pharmaceuticals at higher rates than the insured; no portability; some employees subsidizing others due to family and health status; and on and on and on.... Contrast this to auto insurance, including the government-mandated high-risk pools, where most have required, and affordable, and portable insurance with relatively little muss and fuss. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE - being unemployed for a 1&1/2 years and uninsured for 1 year of that time; and, owning a small business with a mix of employees that both consume alot of health care and some who opt not to take any insurance.
• Public Housing (and dare I say, Race) - the lofty and highly moral goal of providing affordable housing to all almost brings a tear to my eye. Our government of do-gooders built high-rise public housing that has condemned generations of mostly black families to poverty by placing families in war zones that denied them safe dwelling, any education, anything resembling dignity, and in many cases, life (or anything remotely resembling life.) PERSONAL EXPERIENCE - living in Chicago within 1/8 mile of Cabrini-Green; which at my time was 3/4's torn-down and still was scary to drive through in the middle of the day...a real war zone...or at least a real post-war zone, complete with young black men (soldiers?) in wheel chairs (the lucky ones?) (Funny aside...civil rights organization, which one I do not remember, in the mid-nineties, expressing 'outrage' that not enough subsidized housing was being built on the North Shore, which of course was the most expensive real estate in greater Chicago and where the poor would have felt right a home, and the rich would have welcomed them with open arms.)

More later...much more. Cheers!

New Orleans 09.04.05

Quick Comments:

1) Someone should put the state and local officials of Louisiana & New Orleans under the klieg lights. It seems to me that the volume of their criticism of the Feds response to Katrina (which was admittedly too slow...the bureacracy thing again) is directly proportional to the level of their culpability in not preparing for a disaster in the first place...like evacuating the place among many other preparedness issues!

2) We should question and debate the extent to which New Orleans is re-built. Maybe most of the city should be razed and used as a 'natural' barrier (marshland? levees? et al.) to protect key historic and business districts. Keep residences to a minimum and let people commute in from the other side of Lake Ponchatrain.