Rush Limbaugh said that if the health care reform bill passed, he was going to move to Costa Rica. I, for one, stand ready to contribute to the fund for his one-way airline ticket.
I wonder if he realizes that Costa Rica has nationalized health care?
For gosh sakes, can we all please stop whining about the snow day? We had one afternoon of unexpected inconvenience, and it seems like half the city wants someone to be fired over it. Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.
Sure, the city of Portland could equip itself with a huge fleet of snowplows and sanding trucks, but that would be an egregious waste of taxpayer money. Such a fleet would sit idle, sometimes for years at a time.
We should all be clear about the government’s responsibility here. ODOT is not required to hold you by the hand and guarantee that you get home in the usual time, regardless of weather conditions or driver stupidity. This snow was a surprise event. No one expected it. By the time it became clear that it was more than just a flurry, an ample collection of incompetent and overconfident drivers had already clogged the streets and highways, making any graceful recovery completely impossible.
Nothing should change because of this event. It was one day. Talk about it, laugh about it, buy some chains, and get over it. Sheesh.
One of my partners has a great idea to save this country a lot of money.
The government could set up kiosks in the major metropolitan areas and give away cocaine, heroine, and methamphetamine, for free. In one fell swoop, you would eliminate 95% or more of the property crime in the country, since addicts would no longer have to steal in order to support their habits. You could redirect the resources of the DEA to more useful tasks. The addiction problem would solve itself pretty quickly by attrition, since those who could not stop themselves would leave the gene pool.
In the long run, and probably in the short run as well, this would be one heck of a lot cheaper than the “war on drugs” we’ve been fighting for decades. It’s almost too bad the idea doesn’t stand a chance.