Joseph Butson

Ken Burns new documentary, “The War“, highlights the conditions through which ordinary men and women fought for their survival, often against incredible odds. The Guadalcanal Campaign is an example of ordinary courage from enlisted men. Actually, their courage was extraordinary
WW II brought us GI Joe and now it is being written out of our culture. This is not a good a thing.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

— Thomas H. Huxley

Kate MacMillan reports on the Saskatchewan provincial election where the incumbent party, the New Democrats [NDP], have introduced universal drug coverage with prescriptions capped at $15.00.

On the surface of it, the promise is striking in that Saskatchewan is the birthplace of universal health care in North America despite its smallish size and recent history of struggling with rising health care costs.

It is likely a viable option, under wholly different circumstances mind you, not the least of which is the politics and ideology of the incumbents currently waging a nasty election.

Canada’s NDP is a Moveon.org wet dream. It is a party that is anti-war, anti-corporate, pro abortion, pro gay, pro same sex marriage, inventors of universal health care and stridently politically corrrect.

While they have formed provincial governments in many Canadian provinces, they’ve never broken through in federal politics and struggle to win as many seats as their typical 17% share of the popular vote in federal politics.

Forming a rump of Canadian voters, decidedly left wing in their politics, meaning self identified as progressives in favor of social justice and income distribution writ large, the NDP party has only succeeded in winning provincially, and thank goodness for that.

If any place in North America can make pharmacare compliment universal healthcare, its a prudent government in Saskatchewan. It is a constituency that has proved how to balance market forces with consumer rights to fundamental government services. The Canada Health Act, rich in concept if shoddy in practice, wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Saskatchewan’s management of medicare.
Now that leaves the Saskatchewan of Lorne Calvert’s NDP party out of that legacy equation, what with their poor command of the fiscal reality of the province in its current situation. The Calvert government is only slightly less socialist than Quebec and with over 43% of the provincial budget tied up in supporting deteriorating health care services, the real focus ought to be fixing that first.

More later on Canada’s struggle with universal health care later.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a single payer system for health services. The idea held by some in the United States that the insurance companies and their potent lobbyists need to be an intermediary between a patient and their physician, is as a contrived an argument as those same special interests that fear universal medicare for Americans via a single payer system.

But I’ll save that discussion for another post!

Just what I need on my morning newspaper’s frontpage!

James Hufferd, a part-time geography instructer at DMACC, gets equal time [or better] with the touring 9/11 exhibit coming to my town.

A nutjob like this doesn’t deserve the “free speech” award of the day at the Des Moines Register. He needs the Bill Mahar “treatment.”

I suppose by giving him time-of-day he’ll be humiliated beyond belief, or just get fired! One can only hope!

ht:SDA