shut it. quiet. what what

I’m a bit off-balance this week so I’ve been pretty quiet – or not, depending on where you live. A few things are gnawing at me and I haven’t fully sorted them out in my head.

First, I’m off meat in a much more permanent basis than the last five or six years. I’d say that I’ve been about 95% off since then – I’ll nibble on leftover scraps from the kids’ dinners – but we don’t do any mains for adults that include meat, and for varying reasons. You can ask X about her reasons since they’ve been well in place for most of her life and who am I to address her choices. Mine were primarily a cholesterol-avoidance plan that turned into the norm after years of not cooking anything with meat for meals. I haven’t missed it, really, so it didn’t even seem like much of a sacrifice back in about 2004 when it started. Right, there’s that. I’ll expand more on it at some point over the next week or so.

Second, (note: I just deleted and entire sentence of profanities and have begun, anew…) the healthcare insurance reform bill. I think it’ll get done over the next few weeks and we can move on to other issues that are presenting loads of other problems in our country. But, I need to take a few lines here to chastise people for ignorance. By ignorance I mean specifically the method of putting head to sand and refusing to have any type of debate on an issue that is causing so much wasted time and effort. I don’t even know that it bothers me when people yell and scream “facts” that aren’t actually facts – not much I can do about that. The rub here are the people that are too lazy, too unwilling (is that the same?), or too blinded by their people, to actually study an issue before screaming from the rooftops. Unless you can give me one actual fact that supports a position you hold (without using something like the CBO as a prop but then throwing it out when you don’t agree with you) then you don’t get to play. I’m fine with giving up a year of our governing life to get this done – I’d like it to do even more – but we are at the end. Maybe it might seem wrong to say but I’ll give it to you straight: it will get rammed down your throat and I’m cool with that. I’m not concerned about the elections – they’ll take care of themselves – and the time has come for this to be done. I’d say that it’s been a good debate but it hasn’t been: it’s been nothing more that an embarrassment. If you don’t have a plan you can go sit in the corner and color with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner. Good fucking riddance.

I feel better.

(Enter less hostile Todd from stage left)

Everything here is going well – kids and school seem to be working in a temporary emulsion – and the weather has come to spring, finally. The damn cats (damn cats!) have posed a problem that initially seemed like a batch of bad cat food (we only feed them dry) but may be more centered upon warm weather, mole-snacks, and less eating required. I returned the first bag only to see the second bag receive the same treatment. I changed stores and brands, thinking I would avoid a bad delivery truck or company, only to get similar results. At this point, they can eat it or not – they’re smart enough, right?

The orthodontist issue is almost sorted out (see previous work), but not quite. We have a “consultation” appointment next week (“Hmm, you have braces, I see…”) and then hopefully everything will get off the start line.

The Eleven is planning a long (one-two week) crazy vacation for about a year from now. We’re tempted to just find the cheapest, late-booked, vacation packages and hit the road – nearly blind. But, if anyone has any suggestions on warmer and less-touristy worldwide destinations, please submit your inputs to our anonymous comment box near the door as you exit.

One more thing: the Formula 1 season kicks off this weekend in Bahrain and here’s a photo from yesterday’s festivities and practice session. If you don’t know me too well, or don’t follow F1, then you won’t find this picture nearly as ironic or sacrilegious as I do:

what's that? way off in the distance...

I remember thinking over the summer that maybe we’d be better off with smaller and more locally-managed schools; I mean much smaller. In particular, I was thinking about elementary schools and the idea that if they were broken down to far less than a quarter of their current size we might be better off. The idea was unwittingly supported last night when there was a quick search of the elementary school Web site to find out what class one of the boys would in this year: there were either five or six sixth grade classes with 20 or 25 students in each. I hadn’t realized the school was large enough to accommodate 120-150 sixth graders. I don’t think all the grades are so large – no reason why I would think this way – but we’re still looking at 700-800 kids in one elementary school. I know this sounds crazy but what if there were 6-8 smaller schools located throughout the catchment area? The position of principal, all the administration, and all the maintenance could still be performed from a much smaller ‘school HQ’ located in the area. Since there are already six teachers working with sixth graders we could simply disburse them – and the locally-grown students – to one of the smaller schools. Instead of having a single 800-kid structure we could have 7 or 8 100-kid schools that I think would function on a much stronger academic and community basis. If there were eight small schools throughout a current school catchment then you’d have to believe a good bit of the buses and associated costs could be vastly reduced, if not eliminated. I understand there would be issues as families stay put, kids grow up, and configuring students-to-schools might become harder but I don’t think it’s impossible. Part of what drove this was thinking over the summer was when I thought about H’s school which has something like 120 kids, grades 4-12, that manages to utilize a fairly small geographic footprint but still has plenty of room and resources to have classes (entire grades) of 8-12 students. There are so many of the problems that bother me about public schools that could be eliminated with smaller, concentrated, and more focused schools. His school doesn’t even have a cafeteria – something that I find untroubling; I have no faith in the crap that most schools are feeding kids anyway (imagine the cost saving with no kitchen or staff?). That would mean that parents send lunch to school with kids, and I know that might be an issue, but at least if you want to poison your kid with junk then feel free; no one else has to actively support that decision. Why do we feel the need to continue even further down the big school road?

Another contributor to this idea rising again today is an article on the health care system by David Goldhill at the Atlantic. What strikes me most, within my idea of schools, was his premise that huge hospitals aren’t necessarily the best solution: consolidating everything into one behemoth that handles both catastrophic care and a good bit of the non-catastrophic care dulls competition. (Maybe I’m sort of paraphrasing.) If you can configure the system to where small, specialized clinics can meet the basic preventive care and minor needs of a smaller community then we might be onto something. I’m well aware that schools and health care seem like two completely different issues, but are they? Both require all of us to provide funding – via premiums or taxes – yet we often don’t get the say of the consumer: is it working? Is it quality? How do I feel about it?

Imagine a community where the schools and doctors were smaller planets that orbited much close to your environment? What about an elementary school that had five or six teachers that all the kids and parents were familiar with? I think it would much harder for a kid to get lost in the mix, or bullied, or fall behind if he’s in a smaller pool. As with the piece on health care, it’s not like anything of this magnitude can or will happen overnight: maybe it would take twenty or twenty-five years to get fully online. Well, so what? The greatest mistake we all make – when talking politics or thinking about exercising – is that we don’t ever really sell the future self idea. It seems so far away that we can’t get up the good head of steam needed to start pushing. Everything slips even further down the road while we ponder what to do. As X told me the other day, and duly cited the source, “Twenty years is going to pass regardless of what you do. You might as well get started.”

Ah, the future self.

it happens every so often...i rail

Based on the poverty levels established by the Federal Government, a family of four earning double the poverty level (the mysterious and evil 200% number) would be looking at numbers much like these below. Of course, those who were so infuriated at SCHIP or health insurance reform can only see 200% and/or the $41,200 income per year for that family of four – the $41,200 that is published by the government as a part of the poverty tables; I wonder why? Here we go…

After taking out federal income tax ($7,000/year), Virginia state income tax ($2,117/yr), and FICA / social security ($3,150/year), we end up with about $2,421 brought home per month. The family of four sits down and runs a pretty conservative budget:

$1,000 rent for a two-bedroom apartment (the kids sleep in one room)
$300 for family of four health insurance premiums
$600 for food
$200 for clothing fund and activities for children
$100 for both parents to the ride the Metro buses five days a week (roundtrips)

Total expenses: $2,200
Leftover: $241/month

We haven’t included utilities (another $100-$150/mo.?), dental insurance, they don’t have a car (no gas, no insurance), telephone service – no kids running around with cells, no vacations, co-pays on health insurance, Christmas presents, or any other niceties. Nothing. That $241 will be gone when we eventually pay for heat, water, and dental care. No investments. No IRAs, no savings for retirement. What exactly is unclear about just how much money it takes to live a very simple and basic existence? No credit card debt, nothing owed, no money saved for college. The kids are walking to school or riding the bus. These numbers are for the 200% family – they toe the line and they still have absolutely nothing at the end of each month. If you need a little more to drive it home think about this: in order to bring home an income of $41,200 per year the two parents would each need to work 40 hours per week and earn $10.15/hour. That’s truth.

So, for all the Michelle Malkin followers, Fox News watching drones, Republican hardheads in congress, the President, and the Hummer driving, cell phone-toting, two-home owning, and vacation-taking screamers…please…shut up.

Sorry. I couldn’t help it.

T.