Of course, I’ve heard a lot from people over the months. Mostly, it has been about how the choice was a “done deal” and it was the “good old boy club in action” that would make the choice. I caught the early release of the article in the wee hours of the morning on the internet and my jaw hit the floor! The person selected has amazing credentials! In fact, his credentials reminded me of a paramedic I use to work with in Florida, Craig Fugate, now head of FEMA!

It is Christiansburg’s good fortune that someone with this level of expertise chose to apply. It is a clear sign that the process used by Acting Town Manager Barry Helms and the members of the committee who reviewed the applications and interviewed applicants works and works well! Kudos to the Town and the Staff!

Mr. Coyle starts work on September 1 and I hope he has his ‘running shoes on’. One thing about people who work in EMS. Seldom do they do it for the money because they are either volunteers or aren’t paid much to begin with. Another thing, seldom do they do it for the glory (believe me there’s not much glory in getting puked on, bled on, being up all night, being cussed, spit one, etc.) All that I have worked with did it for the ’cause’ of helping people. I believe that Mr. Coyle has this same type of dedication and will bring his expertise into our Rescue Squad and make it one of the best in the state!

My thanks to the Town for making such a great choice. Someone with this type of experience in the field and in the office is rare. My thanks to Mr. Coyle for taking on the challenge. I’ll have to check and see if the committee members names are available so that those people can be thanked as well! I can see this moving us towards a 114 substation at a much faster rate of speed! But first, volunteers, training, paperwork sorting and processing. Oh, and did I mention he knows about GRANTS!!!! You know, those funding thingies that help reduce the financial costs to taxpayers:)

And look, all it cost us was a bunch of teaching positions, a lot of health services, resources such as battered women’s centers, mental health, all of that stuff that is useful to all those lowly citizens. We’ve got our agenda right. We’re gonna save all that money and put it into keeping the flow of tourists and trucks going on routes that bypass most of the state.

Now the world knows that we put toilet paper up there higher than educating our children. We put public toilets about the needs of our elderly and ill.

Thank goodness there were no cuts in the budget affecting all those big businesses though. Heaven forbid that should happen. We would look un-American!

Oh, yeah….I think it is time to contact all of those Delegates, Senators, and the Governor to let them know exactly how proud we are of making sure that our priorities are in order.

Okay, enough sarcasm. I have never been as disgusted with government in Virginia as I am right now. What I see is a great big political game being played at the expense of citizens. The “I will not raise taxes” statement is coming home to roost. If any resources are going to be available to help with education and social/health services, it is going to have to come from localities. That means the lower populated areas are left hanging out to dry. That means the education of our children will be compromised. Local Free Clinics will be stripped of funding. It means that those very services that allowed the seriously ill to remain in their homes will be stripped away and they will be forced into nursing homes or hospices to live out their lives at a higher cost. Those higher costs will shift to increased insurance rates for everybody because the insurance companies sure aren’t going to donate services or eat the costs.

How about a different way to save money. How about all elected officials give up one year’s salary to start with and see what difference that makes.

Starving the poor while filling their own plates full is not what I voted for…how about you?

Sorry if this has been a bit disjointed, but I am just too angry to think straight right now. Something needs to be done and the only thing that can be done is to contact your representatives and let them know what you think.

To find out who your legislators are: http://conview.state.va.us/whosmy.nsf/main?openform

House of Delegates Phone List: http://dela.state.va.us/dela/MemBios.nsf/MWebsiteTL?OpenView

State Senator Phone List: http://sov.state.va.us/SenatorDB.nsf/$$Viewtemplate+for+WMembershipHome?OpenForm

If you need other ways to contact them, call me 540-382-6431 and I will help you find what you need if you can’t locate it on the Virginia General Assembly website.

Write the contact information down on 5 sheets of paper and give them to five other people and ask them to call as well. Please do not be silent on this. Every one of us knows at least one child or adult who will be negatively affected by these budget cuts. Do it for them even if you are not directly affected…today. “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

Determining what it says and who it says it to is a fine art for those who want to know what their money is really saying.

The loudest voices are usually related to small numbers of people/groups who have a lot of money backing them. Simply turn on the TV and watch the ads that are available. Most of these are not truly informational because they are slanted to vocalize one side of an issue or the other. This is the ploy used by candidates, elected officials, political parties, and special interest groups. Their goal is spread the word…their word to every ear that they can. They trust that people will accept what is said because of who they have doing the talking or by some logo or name affiliated with their ’cause’. They trust that people will trust them to give the truth. Well, they do give the truth, but as my mother always said “There are 3 sides to every story. Yours, mine, and the ‘truth’.”

You see, truth is not that easy to identify. What is ‘truth’ to one person can be an absolute lie to another. I personally use some specific subsets of truth when I am looking at a situation. First, I look at ‘reactive truth’. This is where something is going on that has a direct effect on me right now and I have an immediate ‘gut’ reaction to it. In essence, it is emotion driven. Second, there is ‘relative truth’ which is where I calm down a bit and look at what has been said and process that information based on what I have found through life experiences such as listening to others, reading, experiencing, etc. This tends to be more of a cognitive assessment of the truth. Then, lastly, there is a synthesis truth where I look at my emotional reactions and compare them to the data (facts) in an effort to determine whether my reactions are, indeed, based upon facts or whether someone has simply tried to use fear as a tool to shift my thinking and values. All too often, I find that there has been a fairly blatant attempt by someone to do exactly that, frighten me in order to get me to climb onto their ‘bandwagon’.

Examples of how people’s emotions and fear have been used to distort reality in order to serve the needs of the few are rampant throughout the Health Care Debate. They are also freely flowing in the negative campaign ads that we have seen devolve into ‘mud-slinging’ circuses during recent campaigns.

The problem is that these types of tactics work now and will continue to work so long as people make the assumption that those people in power (whether governmental, financial, or other based) are going to look out for the interest of the people. In order to find that out, people need to care enough about what is happening to be willing to look and think for themselves.  Whenever you see an ad that automatically makes you think something negative about someone or something simply stop for a few minutes and ask yourself who will benefit if you let yourself respond to the fear or anger that the ad creates. You may well be surprised at what you begin to see. In particular, dig a bit to see whose money is covering the costs of those ads. That, alone, can be very insightful!

Wikipedia has an informational page about Outsourcing that is a good source of general information concerning this: “subcontracting a service, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company.” This definition, used in the first sentence of the page, shows how much this process does to help ‘Big Businesses’. Subcontracting is something that few small businesses can afford to do in order to get their products out to the public for sale. Additionally, many small businesses are family owned and operated, contribute to their local economy, and therefore, the business owners do not wish to outsource jobs. Quality control becomes an issue as well. When a business has been built on family pride, there is a great deal of psychological investment in quality of the product. This is a feature of small businesses that is frequently lost with the big corporations. The bigger the business, the farther away from the product are those people who make the decisions that affect quality control.

“The decision whether to outsource or to do inhouse is often based upon achieving a lower production cost, making better use of available resources, focusing energy on the core competencies of a particular business, or just making more efficient use of labor, capital, information technology or land resources.” In short, to make more in profits!

Outsourcing can be done within the boundaries of the United States OR it can be done in other countries. If services/jobs are outsourced within the United States, all companies have a fairly even playing field. The application of outsourcing without the boundaries of the United States is where a potential for ‘unfair advantage’ exists. Unfair advantage for the United States worker, that is!

If anyone is unaware of the vast number of U.S. jobs that have flown away to land in foreign countries, it does not take much effort to find information on the internet. EarnMyDegree.com hosts a webpage that begins by identifying many of the types of jobs that are currently being outsourced and some jobs that may be considered safe from outsourcing. Suffice it to say that the analysis of likely to be “safe from outsourced” jobs are all focused on services that required ‘either face-to-face or hands-on contact. Doctors, nurses, teachers, physical therapists, dental assistances, child-care workers, etc. are all likely to be safe from the threat of outsourcing. However, they are not safe from the negative effects of outsourcing.

What negative effects you ask? How can businesses saving money which can result in lower overall costs to consumers be bad? How about the number of unemployed people, the number of people having to use government services, the loss of competition (just how long do you think those prices will stay low when their is no competition?), and the loss of those small businesses that have been the centers of communities since the founding of this country?

Articlesbase.com has a Feb. 5th 2009 article Concept of Back Office Outsourcing Jobs in the Insurance Sector that provides an example of how outsourcing is being marketed as a good thing. In this instance, the argument is presented that Auto Insurance Companies do not have the time to handle everything efficiently, and that good customer service demands that jobs be outsourced to countries such as India where a .. “good outsourcing company can help their clients in many ways to keep track of their records, which usually get piled up in a normal office scenario, in the areas of book keeping, accounting, financial reporting, content digitization, etc. with perfection”. Further noted in the article is “Now a days many of the Auto Insurance companies abroad have started outsourcing their back office jobs to Indian companies as a strategic idea to cut down costs and they get easy access to intellectual caliber of the people in India.” While those may all be good arguments, where does the loss of jobs for citizens of the United States come into play? Where does the loss of federal, state and local tax revenue come into the equation? It is clearly a case of “Big Business” looking at their profit margins rather than striving to be good citizens.

Another discussion on outsourcing appears in The New York Times where an article in their World Business Section August 11, 2008 (by Heather Timmons) Cost-Cutting in New York, but a Boom in India can be found. This author looks at the ways in which Wall Street businesses is cutting some of their overhead by outsourcing many jobs, including research, to companies in India. Ironically, many of the U.S. companies noted in the article are also those firms which have recently received U.S. taxpayer support. This leaves us in a situation where U.S. taxpayer money is now being used to outsource U.S. jobs creating further job loss in the U.S. and effectively serving to cut (or at best, hinder the growth of) the very same tax base that helped those Wall Street companies stay afloat and paying all those bonuses to those those they are keeping state side.

One of the most telling lines in that New York Times article is on page 2: “There’s a huge amount of grunt work that has been done by $250,000-a-year Wharton M.B.A.’s… Some of that stuff, it’s natural to outsource it.” Okay, I give up. Why do managers of very large, very profitable businesses have $250,000-a-year M.B.A.’s doing grunt work? Is this how they manage the rest of their business? If so, it is a miracle we are not in worse shape economically than we are right now. Don’t we have enough people in our own country to do ‘grunt work’ without having to send it overseas? If you’re going to outsource, why not outsource it to companies right here in the good old U.S.A.?

Perhaps the largest reason why U.S. jobs are migrating overseas is because of the cost of health care! The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system. Health care in China runs an average annual cost of approximately $7.00 per person (NO THAT IS NOT A TYPO). Of that annual cost, 40% ($2.80) is paid by the central goverment, 40% ($2.80) is paid by the provincialgoverment, and 20% ($1.40) is paid by the individual. India has a universal health care system hosted by state/territorial governments. By purchasing an outpatient card, the individual receives free outpatient care. Hospital treatment is calculated based upon an individual’s income level, with costs waived for those below the poverty level. More examples and further information on these can be found at wikipedia’s universal health care site.

Given the fact that employer provided health care is not an issue in those countries where U.S. jobs are being outsourced at a rapid pace, maybe it is time for our elected officials to get a clue. Universal health care or at least the public option, could keep U.S. jobs in the U.S. Maybe we would not have so many citizens out of work. Just something to think about.

In a September 9, 2009 article for the Huffington Post by Mark Dorlester entitled Guaranteed Health Care in Iraq – But Not For You, more information comes out about how Republicans have historically behaved when it comes to universal health care. The Iraqi Constitution was carefully crafted to mandate universal health care and, in fact, notes: “Article 31 reads: “First: Every citizen has the right to health care. …” THE RIGHT! So, the U.S. can step in and demand that citizens of other countries have health care as a right, but it is a right denied to its own CITIZENS?

Here, in the United States we have people asking for this type of health care. Instead of providing it, our own government refuses U.S. citizens BUT forces the same thing down the throats of countries that have not asked for it?

I do not understand the difference in values here. The article above goes on to say: “In other words, the most senior members of the Republican establishment – and some Democrats like Max Baucus (D-MT) – have gladly spent more taxpayer funds to ensure health care as a Constitutional right in Iraq than they are willing to spend to give you any level of guaranteed coverage.”

I would certainly like to know exactly which of our elected officials voted to support and fund that war, then…ask them to explain why they feel citizens of other countries are more deserving of a Constitutional right to health care AND the taxpayer money to support it!

The author also provided a link to the full text of the Iraq Constitution…a very interesting read indeed!

Candidates Forums & Voters Guides 2009

When you go in to cast your vote, you are affecting:

• What laws will be made.
• How laws will be enforced.
• How and WHERE tax money will be spent.
• What businesses are likely to choose to come to your area.
• Your property taxes.
• The quality of education provided to your community’s children.
• Accessibility of a higher education.
• The value of your property.
• Who serves on citizen committees.
• What roads are repaired or expanded.
• Tuition rates of universities and community colleges.
• Access to services such as DMV (if money is cut so are days and hours)
• Rest areas on I-81.
• Law Enforcement.
• Fire and Rescue.
• Social Services.
• What types and where trails and bike-ways are built.
• What types of businesses are available to you locally.
• Funding cuts at State level result in increases at the local level.
  • Services that must be provided are often supplemented by State funds. When that money is cut, it falls upon the local jurisdictions to pick up the slack or else it doesn’t happen.
• Quality of drinking water.
• How stormwater issues are dealt with.
• Sewer and garbage issues.
• Maintenance of state and local parks.
• Quality and availability of recreational facilities.
• Health insurance.
• Unemployment insurance.
• Car insurance rates.
• Product safety (agricultural in particular).
• Fraud protection.
• Child welfare and safety.
• Economic Development (creation of JOBS!
• WHEN ELECTIONS ARE HELD!!!!! ( Are they convenient for voters and do they cost or save money for taxpayers.)

And, the list goes on for a long, long time. Your vote is important because the outcome of elections will have a long term effect on your quality of life, your financial resources, your community, and your state.

Please take the time to go vote on November 3rd. And remember that a vote to move the elections to November in Christiansburg will mean a saving of approximately $5000/election (at the minimum, that could double in the next couple of years). Could you think of a better use for that money? Maybe a local farmer’s market? Maybe to apply to the Aquatic Center interest payments? Maybe host another baseball or basketball tournament to bring more business in to the community? Maybe help support the Library or the Free Clinic? Maybe to use as the ‘matching funds’ to help develop sidewalk-trail systems that actually connect with something? Think about it!

YOUR VOTE IS YOUR VOICE! USE IT! DON’T REMAIN SILENT!

Well, that seems to be one of the options being discussed. There is that darned word ‘options’ again. It sounds like politicians want to exercise their options to prohibit me from exercising my options. Maybe I’m missing something in this but something just doesn’t seem right.

I have no problem with the voters of a state deciding whether or not they wish to have a public health care option available to them. I have a great deal of problem with elected officials making that decision for me or any other citizen.

If the put the public option in and leave the opportunity for states to opt out, that should require a referendum by the public. The VOTERS should be the ones to decide, not elected officials who may or may not be tempted to make a choice based upon pressure from big interest groups.

In fact, since some elected officials seem to be so sure that the American people do not want a public option, maybe it should just be put on a national ballot and simply let people decide.

Some of these arguments against a public OPTION are so stupid that I find it embarrassing to think that the rest of the world is seeing this kind of discussion. Here’s some of the points I feel are important:

1. If elected officials are so sure American’s do not want this, why not simply let the option go through, and the failure of people to choose that option will prove their argument?
2. If we can trust insurance companies to do the right thing and police themselves, why did this ever come up as an issue? How did we get to this point?
3. What is the big idea of trying to stop an OPTION when the Declaration of Independence clearly supports “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
4. Add to #3 that the first line of the Virginia Declaration of Rights reads “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

There are some central themes here that tell me that it is citizens who should make the choice, not elected officials. Elected officials cannot be expected to get out to talk to every single citizen to ascertain what citizens want. Perhaps, a hundred or more years ago, that would have been possible, but not with today’s populations. In order for elected officials to do their jobs properly, they need to remember that it is simple things like: “freedom” which includes the RIGHT TO CHOOSE; “life” which means to be alive (something that health care seems to be pretty much directly related to); and, happiness (i.e., free from what worries and fears that one can be free of) which seems to be directly related to being healthy, being restored to a state of health, or, at least, being as comfortable as possible with whatever state of ill health with which a person has to live.

Another thing or two elected officials need to remember arethat lies, deception, and misdirection eventually come back to haunt you. We as citizens will watch, we will remember, and we will get out and vote! Just give us the truth and let us make our decisions about our lives. Do not be so out of touch with those you represent that you miss seeing and listening to those for whom the existing health care options are simply NOT financially feasible. We have far too many people in this country who cannot afford to eat, pay for housing, buy clothes, or buy Christmas presents for their children. For those people, being able to come up with the money to provide decent health care in the existing forms available is not an option .

We, as a country as only as strong as the “least among us”. People who cannot afford health care are not asking for money for enhancing body parts, unnecessary plastic surgery, or other such things. The issue is simply basic health care.

It is a crying shame when a country provides Viagra through Medicare, but  the woman with an unplanned pregnancy and no insurance could look at being financially devastated, possibly even end up losing custody of any other children she has simply because there was no health care option. If you are against abortion, then think about how the public option could help in cases such as this.

Don’t bother telling me that stuff like that doesn’t happen. I saw it when I was a child abuse investigator. Families devastated by medical bills that ended up unable to provide adequately for their children. I’ve seen children removed from homes and placed in foster care or with other relatives simply because parents could not afford to pay medical bills. I’ve seen families thrust into abject poverty trying to cover those bills, unable to feed and clothe their families DESPITE working one or more jobs where the person working could not afford the family plan. I’ve seen the loss of pride and dignity as people who have worked hard to provide for their children suddenly had their lives crash around them. I’ve seen people resort to illegal activities as a last resort to try to pay those bills and provide for their families.

Come on, all you elected officials, give us a chance to make our own choices. This has gone on for far to long. It is time to quit talking and start doing!

Then, I started looking a bit deeper. Could it be that the people who are most afraid are the ones who have used this issue for years as a way of getting elected are afraid that if health care reform comes to pass, it will be such a success that they will have to address other things for campaign issues. Darn, that could cause them to have to write new speeches, get new signs, maybe even shake a few more hands. Just something to think about.

The Roanoke Times recently covered a story on the Museum in the old Depot in Cambria. I had been thinking lately of some sort of historical reinactment to do in Cambria as part of a celebration. Thank you Mac Mitchell. You have given me the answer I have sought all this time.

Here’s what we need to do. We start in Riner where we have people bring in turkeys from where ever turkeys come from before they arrive at Kroger. Nope, not the Sarah Palen types of turkey that are headless. I mean, the walking, talking, strutting kind of turkeys….(nope, not elected officials either). Anyway, we get about 200-300 of these turkeys collected and sorta like that “running of the bulls” thing they do in Spain, we do a ‘running of the turkeys’. We bring that herd of turkeys all the way from Riner, through downtown Christiansburg and right up to the Depot as if they were being driven up to load on railcars.  What a sensation! I’ll bet people from miles around would come to watch the event. But, on second thought, maybe it would work better with elected officials. Naw…they’re not as colorful but the noise level would be about the same!

(Just some thoughts while I’m still working on the Water Sewer Ordinance update review:)

It was a hot summer day in Florida, the ambulance I was working in was dispatched to a vehicle accident. We raced to the scene where there wer 2 fire trucks and 3 rescue vehicles already there. People in uniforms were running around everywhere. I figured it must really be bad. I did notice that everyone was busy grabbing equipment and there wasn’t anyone with the patients. Someone hollered at me that the doors were jammed. The Jaws of Life and Metal Saws were being pulled out and hooked up. I took off for the vehicle and its occupants carrying my jumpkit, oxygen, and cardiac monitor. My partner went to the drivers side, I went to the passenger side. An older male was slumped over the steering wheel on my partner’s side, an older female was on the passenger side. She was conscious and alert, and in a great deal of pain. Fortunately, the windows were down and I could start to work on her right away. I got busy (these things happen in a hurry). Once I saw the damage to her leg, which I couldn’t reach through the window, without thinking, I grabbed the door handle and opened the door to start to stabilize the broken leg.

Of a sudden, there was a great hush to all of the noise that had been going on. I looked up and my partner was staring at me. He looked at the door he was trying to work through, stepped back and opened it. We now had full and complete access to the patients and other emergency responders had a lot of equipment to put up.

Talking about it later we found that a ‘good samaritan’ had stopped shortly before the fire and rescue personnel. He stood by the car yelling at them that the doors were jammed. There first thought, of course, was that they needed to have a way to get access to the patients, so they started getting equipment ready to tear the car apart and get them out. Unfortunately, because they had not checked for themselves, this wasn’t necessary.

It was an emergency situation, and someone gave some bad information that a lot of other people reacted to. Fortunately, there were only moments lost, but the situation could have been worse. Perhaps it was only dumb luck that caused me to try the door.

How this relates to the current issue of health care reform is that:

• We do have an emergency situation. Things are only going to get worse if something doesn’t happen pretty quickly.
• Mis-information is as thick as mosquitos in a swamp.
• People are trying to respond in an urgent manner that sometimes keeps them from checking what they have been told or looking for new facts to address.
• The outcome? That will depend upon how many people try the door by accident and how quickly.

Please take the time to contact your elected officials and ask them for the facts. Speak with your own doctors and see what they have to say. Read the newspapers, watch a variety of news shows on TV so that you are not getting only one opinion. Stop, for just a moment, and ask what is best for our Country.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the concept of health care reform, perhaps the example Senator Kennedy presented will lead the way in discussions. Senator Kennedy did not use “Fear Tactics” to get his points across. He used common sense, a large does of facts, and a healthy side portion of compassion.

Fear results in closed minds and closed fists. Perhaps Senator Kennedy’s greatest legacy is that he maintained an open mind and open hand in trying to find ways to serve this Country.

Education of the public, empowering people to make choices that are right for them, and presenting a voice for those who do not have the resources to speak up for themselves. Those are the marks of good leadership.

Thank you Senator Kennedy for raising the bar and setting an example for all good leaders to follow. Whether a person agreed with his views or not, it is clear that he was willing to reach out, to be inclusive, in order to get things done. He knew the importance of service to the public and lived life accordingly. He did not use “fear tactics” in an attempt to frighten people into adherence to a cause he supported. He sought unity rather than divisiveness. He sought to empower rather than to disenfranchise.

Senator Ted Kennedy will be missed. I hope that his legacy, the example that he provided through his years of public service will continue on into the far distant future.