Monday, April 27, 2015

Trouble in the back of the bus

Vignettes
·         

  • When the media weren't looking, Michigan’s Senate voted, in one day, to dismantle the monetary protections of no-fault insurance. It’s a compassionless move that overwhelmingly favors the insurance companies while hurting the average person.
What it means: For example, if your child comes out of a car accident as a paraplegic, an insurance adjuster, not a doctor, will decide his course of care. Does that sound right to you?

It also hurts your chances of staying alive once you’re taken to a hospital for care. The bill calls for a reduction in the amount of money a hospital will be reimbursed, which means trauma units will lose jobs and lack of staffing means less care.

The no-fault bill is scheduled to be voted on by the full House this week. Google your state House rep today, call him or her and emphatically leave instructions to vote no on this bill. It’s OK if you get your rep’s assistant – they keep track of which way the calls go.

·         I’m thinking about the case of the 13-year-old African-American Bloomfield Hills student who was harassed and repeatedly called the n-word on a school bus during an outing.

The school administration, the students, parents and the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office have made much of this. Their message is zero tolerance of such behavior. The two kids who led the harassment have been suspended; the Oakland prosecutor is deciding whether to charge them and if so, with what.

It’s nice to have that kind of firepower in your corner. It’s actually quite overwhelming. One question bothers me, though: How is this student going to learn to successfully fend for himself?

Unfortunately, I doubt this is the last time the student will be faced with such an ugly situation. Hating has become a national sport. 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Let’s not forget Malcolm X: “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

Punishing the students who harassed the 13-year-old is one way to handle this. Another way would be to educate all students at the school about diversity and why what those two students did was wrong.

It’s education, not the prosecutor’s office, which will bring peace to this situation.


Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Pinocchio tries to pull a fast one


No one likes to be lied to.

If Governor Rick Snyder had come forward and said Proposal 1 contains 10 other pieces of legislation
The Detroit News
he’d like to pass, then I might not have liked it but at least he would have been honest.

Taken individually, the 10 other pieces of legislation could have merit, but we’re well past the point of debating them as a package.

That’s because the governor’s television commercials to get out the vote in favor of Proposal 1 are not truthful. The commercials say, in plain English, that the sales tax increase would be allocated to one thing: fixing Michigan’s roads.

There’s no mention of anything else.

But the proposal actually triggers changes that include more tax credits for low-income families and seniors, higher registration costs for new cars and trucks and, incongruously, greater transparency on public school spending. And while it is billed as new money for road repair, half of the first two years of the new money will pay off bonds for roads that have already been built.

Worse – the governor has been seen in clips shown on newscasts saying there is no Plan B. If Proposal 1 fails, that’s it. We live with the rotten roads.

Not having a Plan B is very poor stewardship on Gov. Snyder’s part. I believe the governor is lying about that, too. He probably does have a Plan B that’s more palatable than Proposal 1, but he wants everyone to vote on the Prop 1 package as though that’s the only thing available to them.

 Then there’s the cost.

During the first year, if the proposal passes, it will cost every household in Michigan slightly more than $500 a year, according to a story carried in Monday’s Crain’s Detroit Business. The story, written by The Associated Press, says after the first year that figure will drop slightly, to about $450 per household annually.

That’s a lot of money to pile on in an economy that’s not very good. Michigan still lags behind about 20 other states in recovering from the recession.


For all those reasons, I can’t see supporting Proposal 1. If you’re still undecided, get on
Google and search Proposal 1 Michigan. If the governor wanted Proposal 1 to pass, he should have offered up a clean bill that addressed the roads, period.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

Veterinarians: what happened to reasonable rates?





Pets have lived with us all our married lives and before that, too. I can’t imagine a life without them.

But veterinarians today are not making it easy to be a good person and take proper care of our friends. Yet they insist that you do so, and wag their collective index fingers at you if you don’t do everything they say to do. And pay the associated fees, of course.

Vets are getting greedy regarding fees. There’s no longer anything altruistic about the veterinarian industry. On one hand, they want everyone to adopt an animal. On the other hand, you’ve just handed over a hefty adoption fee and saved a little friend from foul circumstances. That matters not. The vets of American are insisting numerous tests are necessary for your new friend. Expensive tests.

Can’t have it both ways, people.

A friend of mine just recounted on Facebook the passing of her beloved dog. For a diagnosis and then, for a burial fee, it cost her $1,000 to say goodbye to her dog.

Bella, the land manatee 
She’s a good person and would have done anything for her dog. Apparently, her vet was petting the dog with one hand and tallying up the damage on a calculator with the other hand.

I very much emphasize with her.

Shortly after we rescued Bella, my wife noticed a lump in her throat, and Bella hadn’t been watching anything traumatic on television. It was off to the vet for us.

After a little hmmmmmming and probing of the lump, first with fingers, then with a needle for a biopsy, we were told by our vet, whose bedside manners had vanished, that the lump had to be surgically removed. Only then would we know if the lump was malignant or benign.

So, of course, we had it removed. Then came the biopsy. Another expensive item, yet we had to be sure the lump wasn’t malignant. Turns out, it wasn't.

Bella spent the night at the vet’s and I could hear the tote board running for lodging fees. When we picked Bella up the next day, and this is important, she had a drain sticking out of the side of her throat. We were told to leave the drain in for a couple days.

Bella had other ideas. The next day when I came home from work, Bella proudly presented me with the drain, which she had pulled out of her neck. She was fine. I called the vet and said this case is history – we don’t need to come in and have the drain removed.

Oh, but you do, Mr. Sherman, the receptionist cooed. We have to make sure all of the drain was removed. Please bring Bella back as soon as possible.

I did so, reluctantly, as Bella had done an excellent job. All they did was say yup yup yup, your dog got all of the drain.

The cost of all this? Just shy of $1,600, American money. The vet tried to charge for removing the drain, too, and I learned that for a medium-sized overnight cage with no HBO or Internet, we got dinged $80.

I asked our vet about all this. He told me that– ta da – there is now pet insurance, all the while agreeing with me that veterinary care was becoming very expensive.


It must be difficult to talk out of both sides of your face simultaneously. Veterinarians don’t do it very well. I guess it’s one of those talents best left to the professional liars – our politicians.