welfare-warfare state

President Obama has an ambitious agenda. He wants a “bipartisan health care reform package.” Translation: He wants Republicans to support his goal to increase the federal government’s role in health care now so the Democrats’ long-term goal of a single payer government insurance program will be a reality in a few years.

After the raucous town hall meetings members of Congress faced during their recent vacation, the Democrats realize that the country will not now embrace a single payer insurance system; therefore they will go for the incremental approach. A public option now and then later the big enchilada, universal health care.

On a hot, sunny Saturday 60 years ago we arrived in America.  My parents decided months earlier to come to the land of opportunity from war torn Europe to make a new life for themselves and their sons, my older brother, aged six, and me, aged two. 

My parents, who were the only ones in their respective families to survive the evils of National Socialism (Nazism), did not come to America expecting the government to pay-or help pay--for their needs.  Instead, they worked hard, paid their taxes and became citizens in 1954. 

As New Jerseyans get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving the nation's economic outlook is indeed bleak, and there doesn't seem much to be thankful for after eight years of the neoconservative Bush administration and seven years of the McGreevey, Codey, and Corzine regimes.