Because as an American, I can!

It was recently reported by the Dallas News that Last year at Parkland, 11,071 babies were born to women who were non-citizens, about 74 percent of total deliveries. Most of these women are believed to be in the country illegally.  Most people see the big picture, that these “Anchor Babies” allow these illegals to stay within this country and are a quick legal pass to get citizenship when they read this story.  However in the warped mind of David Scherer, another, deeper question comes to mind.  How many of these women actually pay their hospital bills?  I reviewed Parkland’s 2009 financial statement.  Page 18 reflects that the hospital wrote off bad debts $870,000,000 in 2009, and $785,000,000 in 2008.  This is serious money.  I am not going to suggest that all of this is due to illegal immigration, however, I will say the following:

I am estimating that it costs approximately $10,000 in hospital bills alone (not including prenantal treatment) to have a child.  These would be the costs to rush into the emergency room, pop out a baby and leave 2-4 days later alone.  I also am going to estimate that only 1% of illegals have valid insurance.  Therefore it is anticipated that the remainder pay in cash, if they don’t skip on their bill.  This translates to roughly $109,600,000 accounts receivable every year due to the hospital for birthing anchor babies.  Anyone want to take a guess on how much actually gets collected?

How to stop it.  There is no way around the Hippocratic Oath, Democrats will NEVER allow us to refuse services to illegals, after all, they are humans to.  However what is wrong with providing additional measures to track these soon to be American citizens?  I propose in states, adopt a new requirement for a drivers licenses and citizenship, fingerprints and background checks.  Additionally, all patients in hospitals will now have to be fingerprinted when services are preformed.  A computer database syncs the information.  If an illegal immigrant applies for citizenship and they have an outstanding debt to a hospital for the birth of an anchor baby, they must pay off said debt or face significant restrictions (such as a restricted drivers license that only permits daytime driving, or a new issue of driver’s license which provoke’s the right to buy beer & liquor).

The above idea will never happen, the liberals in this country rather see our medical system fall to shambles so they can pump more public money into it to boost up the voting population of 1st generations under education individuals…. but in a dream world I wish it would happen.

“I saved GM”, “I turned around one of America’s largest, oldest and most important companies”,  “I am here for the American worker” – These are just some of the many lies I am already predicting that you will her come from Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012.  The sad part is most people will believe it.  Today’s Wall Street Journal shows that yes, GM has posted a net income of $1.3 billion in Q2 of 2010, following a profit of $850 million for Q1. (A pdf copy can also be viewed here).  But let’s look at some facts regarding what his campaign is going to fail to mention.

1. The Federal government pumped $50,000,000,000 into GM to keep it alive.
   • • As most of us know, our Federal Government is broke, so though it says it put $50,000,000,000 into GM, this is borrowed money.  Now I don’t know what yield these treasuries were sold at (I would appreciate any user comments), but using today’s yield of 3.94% for 30 years, this borrowed money really becomes: $159,386,443,102. - That’s a lot of cheddar.
2. Even I could make a company profitable if I can shed all the bad assets.  One thing that “New GM” did  first was stick the American Tax payer (this means you, not an Obama supporter whom we all know does not pay taxes) with all of the unprofitable liabilities and placed them into “Old GM” (and an additional $1,175,000,000 of working capital from Uncle Sam).  Over 200 of these properties exist, from old offices to highly contaminated factories that endanger local communities.  Over a year into the process of selling these sites and only two have sold, one of these to a upstart firm which required a $529,000,000 loan provided by the US Government.  (Wall Street Journal Article).
   • All the bad assets were shed, except for the US worker.  One of GM’s largest liabilities is overpaid union workers (read Obama supporters).  There is a reason companies like Kia, Nissan and Toyota have started building plants in small cities like Canton, MS; Decherd, TN; West Point, GA and further.  CHEAP NON UNIONIZED LABOR.  Want to build cheap cars?  STOP THE UNIONS.  It is estimated that the average GM worker makes $73/hour when you include benefits.  This is estimated to be $25/hour more than a Toyota worker.  Yes, that’s right, a monkey whom puts a door on a car for 8 hours a day makes triple what the author of this blog makes. (The author also holds a double major in Economics, Finance and a minor in International Business).

Mark my words, Obama is going to say he saved GM, and it is true, but at what cost?

9:30am is my favorite time of day. Strange time right? I don’t know how it started but over a year ago I programmed my watch to go off at 9:30am on the weekends, and it has stayed that way since. Over the past year amazes me the vast contrasts of where I might be given this time of day on the weekends. Some times it has gone off I am on the bike leg of a triathlon, recovering after a 10k, or I might be in bed recovering from the night before… I have been scuba diving in the keys 40 feet down, deepsea fishing off the Florida coast, packing the truck for a Gator Tailgate. No matter what I am doing at 9:30 it makes me happy, and grateful for my life. It’s a time to reflect and make memories, to look forward to my day.

I’m watching The Green Zone.  From the start of the movie I can tell it’s a liberal piece of shit which really bashes the Bush Administration for it’s entrance into Iraq and search for Weapons of Mass Destruction.  However something else really caught my attention, something most likely did not pick up on.

Growing up the son of a contractor, my father once told me about a competing construction firm that got so large that one day it showed up to bid a new construction project for a client, and it’s sister branch from another part of the South East also showed up with a full bid package.  The point: One arm did not talk to another.

The same holds true to the Green Zone.  The movie revolves around the aspect that the US Government is so large that different sects (CIA, DOD, Army) all are competing against each other for sources and intelligence.  At one point, the Army gets a warrant form the White House and raids a CIA headquarters looking for a book with intel.  Hollywood liberals tried to make this a Bush bashing movie talking about the failure of the Iraq war.  Yet, to me it just says one thing: Our government is too big.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about High School Football and how much I sucked at it. I could never “look around” the field and tell what type of play it was, I could not react quick enough to make that pass block, that tackle. I was thinking that if I could take today’s knowledge and understanding about the sport back then it would all be different. I was wrong. I played kickball tonight with my team. I SUCK. I had more errors than I want to own up to…. But I realized something. We are all built different in God’s likeness, I don’t have a flare for grammar, art, or music… and I know God did not make me a person who can react quick. And it is just not athleticism… I can never make that snappy joke in conversation, I can’t catch a girl if she trips…. And when I catch that ball in the outfield I don’t know if I should hold it, or throw it to second or third base… it’s not me, and I hate it. Yet, I know we all have gifts in this world. I believe/hope that mine lies more with analytics… give me data, give me time, let me make a decision, I think…. I know I cam make the right decision. I hope that I can find a job that allows me to use this skill which I have, and be successful with it. As Jimmy Buffett says: “only time will tell”

It might be a strange statement that when dealing with shit (literally), it makes me proud to be an American.  But it does. This morning I called a local septic tank company which services one of our many rural Waffle Houses.  The call was like countless other conversations with these small, family owned businesses; and as always one constant was in the background:  a crying baby.

For you city dwellers, a septic system is a way of disposing of the waste that goes down your sink, toilet, dishwasher and processing it when a local municipality is not capable of providing sewer.  Part of this process involves a septic tank, which is literally a large tank in the ground that holds all of your solids (human waste, food scraps).  Once every six months to a year this tank must be pumped.  It’s a smelly job and not for the weak.

This is not some major company, there is no office address, no 401k for employees.  Here is a rural family, whom likely has a mortgage, a car payment, a work truck payment and a baby.  The wife is a stay at home mother whom also juggles answering the phone for clients, dispatching the husband to jobs, bookkeeping for the company, shopping, laundry cooking… the list goes on and on.  The husband is out before dawn every day.  He leans over moves a 75lb man hole cover (some times four of them) and sticks an apparatus that looks like a giant beater from your mom’s kitchen-aid mixer into a hole in the ground to break up smelly, deteriorating human waste that has been in a hole for 6+ months.  Every night he comes home from work….want to guess what he smells like?

Yet despite all of this, they press on and they work day in and day out.  They chase the American dream, participate in capitalism and bring a much needed service in an industry that is not glamorous.  I respect them for what they do, and I hope everyone else does as well.



BBC Planet Earth might be one of the best TV documentaries I have ever seen.  I highly recommend it.  I’ve been sick all week.  Don’t feel like typing, just wanted to give a shout out.

I must say, things could be worse, I was mostly moved out.  But it is still depressing to lose stuff.  Mostly of note is pretty much every article of work out gear I have for winter, my suits, my medals and numbers from races I have run, spare sheets for beds, all my kitchen wares (pots, pans, microwave, fridge)

Some things really irk me.  Government spending is #1.  Shortly following this is people who bite the hand that feeds them. The AP Wire has picked up a story regarding South Africans protesting because the US will not increase funding to combat Aids in THEIR country.  From the article – “The protesters, clad in green T-shirts emblazoned with the words “HIV-Positive,” marched before the consulate in a wealthy northern suburb of Johannesburg to demand that the U.S. government increase its contribution to the Global Fund on AIDS, TB and Malaria….”

Currently the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has an annual operating budget of $6,800,000,000 – That’s a lot of cheddar.  But where does it all go? I reviewed PEPFAR’s 6th annual report to congress, it’s a mind boggling 21 page report filled with statistics.  As usual, I am just so upset about this I can’t form coherent sentence – list time!

The fine points about PEPFAR’s stats I just don’t get -

• 721,900 Chinese received HIV/AIDs testing and counseling  services
  • Last I checked China has an estimated 297 Billion Dollar Surplus, while the USA has an estimated debt of $13 Trillion.  Why are we spending money in China?
• The fund treated 2,485,300 people world wide with Antiretroviral treatment.
  

  PEPFAR Activities Worldwide

  • According to the CDC “At the end of 2006, an estimated 1,106,400 persons (95% confidence interval 1,056,400-1,156,400) in the United States were living with HIV infection, with 21% undiagnosed
  • The cumulative estimated number of diagnoses of AIDS through 2007 in the United States and dependent areas was 1,051,875″
  • It seems parent to me, we could provide FREE treatment for HIV/AIDS to every diagnosed American Citizen for what we spend to treat people in other countries who do not pay taxes to us.

Let’s do a little math – What percentage of non-green card holding Americans actually have relatives in third world countries?  Now compare that to the percentage of Americans which have children in school.  I think it’s a safe bet that the latter is a significantly larger number.  Finally, who does the US Government have more of a responsibility to watch over, it’s citizens with children in schools, or non tax paying citizens who are ruled by their own government.

As cruel as this may seem, I don’t see how AIDS in Africa, China or third world countries is our problem.  I don’t plan to go have unprotected sex in Africa, I don’t plan to go get a blood transfusion over there.  Why is MY government spending MY money in Africa?

PS – I hated using the analogy of Federal funding for schools, everyone who reads this knows that I believe the Federal Government just adds layers of bureaucracy to the public school system, and Jimmy Carter never should have started the Department of Education… but it’s all I could think of at 6am.

When I was a kid, I worked summers for my dad’s construction company.  Learning the value of a hard earned dollar was important to my father.  As such, since the age of 12 he had me out on job sites dodging OSHA inspectors while I swept floors, cleaned anchor bolts, dug ditches, picked up trash and whatever the super needed from me.  In the hot summer months of Florida, wearing jeans and heavy boots, it’s about as bad as one can get (at least he was not a roofing contractor!).

Needless to say, one summer when I got to work in the office I loved the experience, no matter what I had to do, even make blueprints… See kids, before the days of digital wide format scanners; blueprints were actually blue (shocking I know).  This happened as the copy was made using a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, and boy did it smell!

So today, I can only say that I am happy to still have a job in an industry were I can continue my passion of carting around 24″x36″ sheets of paper all rolled up.  It’s one of the perks I readily enjoy, it reminds me of the hard work I put in on the job site, and to be grateful for what I have in life.