God Bless Us… Every One

 

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die." "If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens 

 

“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!"

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

 

Thousands of seniors of meager means in our pastoral commonwealth of Monroe County, Michigan, expect very little from the rest of us for the coming Holiday Season. Their expectations are usually neither disappointed, nor exceeded. This year must be different.

Many elderly citizens receive a small monthly Social Security stipend, health insurance coverage in the form of Medicare, hot meals from Meals on Wheels, limited access to affordable foods at the county food bank, and restricted personal mobility via a subsidized, county-wide bus transit system. Some receive additional health insurance assistance from Medicaid.

These combined services help provide a veritable lifeline, often proving the difference between just scraping by… and living alone in abject poverty. All of these recipients are wildly grateful for these blessings that they receive. They seldom complain… God willing and knock on wood.

House Speaker, Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell boasts a less charitable view of such matters. They are currently working together on a plan that would effectively end Social Security and Medicare as we know it, to create budget savings that would free up more fiscal shimmying room in the annual dance to peg a Federal Debt Ceiling. They hope to start the process shortly after Christmas of this year, and finish things up before Thanksgiving of next year.

The scheme will utilize a cleverly crafted U.S. House Omnibus Appropriations Bill that would; convert Social Security into a tax deferred annuity investment product in which to park spare retirement cash, and convert Medicare into a block-granted insurance voucher system that would offer fixed value coupons to apply toward the purchase of individual health insurance from the open and competitive insurance marketplace. No spare retirement cash? Cannot afford insurance at current market prices even with the coupon? Tough luck.

The clever element of this legislative dodge arises from the fact that U.S. House Appropriations Bills are filibuster-proof in the U.S. Senate. They allow only a straight yea-or-nay vote by the Senate… and cannot be stalled by a filibuster on the basis of legislative merits. Such bills are unstoppable. If the votes are there in the Senate when the bill arrives, the bill will pass unchallenged… with a whimper. All of this plus a pound of flesh… carved directly from the hearts of the very old, and the very poor.

All that stands between The House Speaker, The Majority Leader, and draconian success… are the needed votes of their lawmaker peers. Those pesky votes, democracy be damned.

Federal lawmakers are a cautious lot when it comes to voting for things that outrage the voters who hire them. Bad votes, votes that anger voters… are the leading cause of career death among the short-termed members of the U.S. House of Representatives. For example, hands off my Medicare… or you’re FIRED! As few as one thousand voter e-mails from a home district in protest of a bad political stance can vex a lawmaker… more than a spike of holly driven through a cold and unfeeling heart.

To salve the ill ease and heartache caused by frequent comments from the voters, lawmakers have cleverly made it more difficult to make contact. They no longer accept or open handwritten mail, blaming fear of anthrax infection. They do not publish accessible e-mail addresses, but rather instead require the use of hard to find online comment forms attached to their lawmaker web-pages. They also often require inclusion of a ZIP Code Plus Four, (ZIP + 4), in the body of the comment form… to add just one more little irritation to the process.

Federal legislators need to be hunted down online before they can be addressed. The following handy links will allow you to easily locate your own three federal lawmakers, and to find your
own ZIP + 4.

ZIP Code Tool: https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookupAction!input.action 

Find a U.S. Representative: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ 

Find a U.S. Senator: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

Elderly voters are often less tech savvy and less digital than most other citizens. They often do not own computers or smart-phones, and many have limited internet and wi-fi access. This makes contacting lawmakers for the purpose of defending the best interests of seniors difficult.

Our charity spends much of its time taking our own laptops and wi-fi hotlinks directly into the homes of seniors in Monroe County, Michigan… to give these citizens an opportunity to make their voices heard. We also make the above contact links available in a point-and click format, to other seniors throughout our Congressional District who do own digital devices… via social media, via e-mail, and via verbal instructions during direct telephone canvassing, to facilitate the opportunity for citizens to voice concerns directly to their legislators.

Saving Social Security and Medicare for the sake of needy seniors nationwide, is a simple numbers game. For the sake of a few minutes of personal time multiplied many people over, and of several million intimidating e-mails to federal lawmakers… efforts to deprive our most vulnerable citizens of vital financial and insurance services can be sidetracked.

Take a moment to contact your own three federal legislators, (two Senators and one Representative), to warn them: Keep your hands off of our Social Security and Medicare… or you’re fired! Invite a few friends to follow suit. Grassroots efforts like this can exponentially generate an unbroken chain of millions of lawmaker contacts. Help to stuff some stockings in Congress with comments in favor of Social Security and Medicare this Christmas. Do this for your elderly neighbors… and do this for your soon to be elderly self. Everyone is in this together, so God bless us… every one.

Maybe you would like to do even more using your own social media and e-mail accounts? We can offer some helpful tips. Like us on Facebook at “ACS Clinical Pharmacy & Sociably Secure-NGO.” Contact us for help at abcfreeseminars@gmail.com or telephone us at 734-241-5580. Why not do good… for goodness sake?

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“We Speak Fluent Medicare”