A new example of why public unions should be illegal came up in the LA Times yesterday. Jerry Brown is giving the prison guard unions improved benefits. The reason: the union gave $2 million to his campaign. Many people have complained about the wages and benefits of the prison guards for many years. I can understand that it may not be legally possible to break contracts but to give more when the state is practically bankrupt? Brown has been trying to put on ballots propositions to increase tax to decrease the deficit. How is he going to get voters to agree to that with his giving to the union? If Brown has any integrity, he would do the right thing and stiff the union. What are they going to do to him? He is not likely to run again given his age and so if I were him, I would do the right thing and the hell with the people who tried to buy me off. Democrats like Brown say that without increasing taxes, programs for the poor will have to cut. But isn't each dollar you give to your political contributors is one less dollar for those programs?

Of course those Republicans who want more tax cut are no better. The McCourts who own the Dodgers, pending take over of the team by MLB, paid no income tax in 2009! There are rich people who use loopholes and off shore accounts to pay nothing. They are always saying that cutting taxes will create jobs. Then why were jobs lost after the Bush tax cut? Did a tax increase caused the recession? Most corporations are making big profits this past year and their tax have not increased. So why are they not hiring?

The truth is both sides will only complain about the wrongdoings of the other side. A candidate I am looking would be a Democrat who wants to get rid of public unions and decrease the size of government or a Republican who would repudiate Wall Street and get rid of loopholes and tax breaks for the wealthy. I am not holing my breath.

The House passed the Ryan bill even though there is no chance that it will become law because of the Democrats have the majority in the Senate and Obama is sure to veto any bill that resembles this one. The budget is very complicated so today I will only talk about the part regarding healthcare as proposed by Ryan. The good thing about this bill is that it forces a debate on the things that are most difficult to cut, ie, entitlements. Due to the power of the senior citizens at the poll, both parties have been reluctant to even talk about cutting Medicare and social security. Certainly, without the challenge from Ryan, Obama would not be so quick talk about how to save money from Medicare. But at the end of the day Ryan's proposals will not work to decrease healthcare cost and will not reduce the deficit. This is the analysis of the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The central point of the Ryan proposal is to dismantle Medicare as we know it today and instead give vouchers for seniors to buy their private insurance. This shows a lack of understanding about health insurance in this country. The administrative cost of private insurance companies is higher than Medicare. The insurance companies also have to make a profit for their investors. If they have been effective in holding down cost then we would not have so many people uninsured and premiums like mine would not have more than double in the past 3-4 years. I would say that Medicare have been too generous in providing this entitlement. For example, it covers a motor scooter for people who can't walk. So now we have many seniors who can walk calling their doctors to authorize a scooter for them. Companies are calling up patients to entice them to bug their doctor about all kinds of free equipment. Many doctors do not want to anger their patients and thus approve things that are really not needed. This obviously drive up cost.

Maybe some of these things would stop if the coverage that seniors are able to buy with their vouchers would not cover them. But it is obvious to everybody, including the CBO, that the amount of the voucher will leave seniors way short. So I am sure by then the seniors, insurance companies, equipment firms, and pharmaceuticals will all lobby Congress to raise the voucher amount. This is what happened when the drug companies and senior groups lobby for the prescription drug coverage. To me that was a waste. Medicare had to use private insurance companies to run the program under the law. This added a middleman to negotiate with the drug companies who now can sell more of the brand products with more seniors who can afford them. Under the law, Medicare with its powerful influence, cannot negotiate directly with the drug companies. Whose idea was that? So now we have more deficit as a result of this program. Who passed and signed this bill? The Republican Congress and George Bush!

The Republicans attacked Obamacare with a scare tactic that say it was cutting Medicare and there would be death panels. These were false charges for political gain only. Ryan's bill is in fact cutting Medicare and will have negative effects on the health of seniors and the handicap. I think the Democrats will use this against the Republicans in 2012. While I welcome a debate to change aspects of Medicare and Medicaid, this proposal is too radical and will not improve the spiraling cost of healthcare. I am afraid as the details are eventually heard by the voters the reaction will be so negative that the Republicans will back off. This will mean the legitimate debate about entitlements will be put off further.

As a Giant fan lies in a coma, the result of a beating outside of Dodger stadium, I am thinking about how uncivilized many sports fans are all over the world. I have not been to many sports events lately but the papers are talking about fights breaking out in the stands being not uncommon now a days. This still do not compare with the soccer hooligans throughout the world but it is alarming for the U.S. I think, just like the rowdy behaviors in English soccer games, much of the problems here in the U.S. can be attributed to heavy alcohol usage before and during the games. Of course there is no chance that the teams will decrease selling of alcohol at stadiums as this is big revenue for them. So I have a feeling that in the future there will be less and less of families with small children attending games.

Sports can be compared to religion in certain locals only. So if sports rivalry can cause violence, can you see why religion can cause extreme violence? Recently after that crazy preacher in Florida burned a koran, a mob killed several UN workers in Afghanistan. This reaction is predictable but of course the preacher was trying to call attention to himself without regard for the safety of other people. The press actually did a good job by not giving him much coverage when he burned the koran. Unfortunately Karzai decided to bring that to the attention of his people which gave the extremists an opportunity to arouse the anger of the people. Since anyone can predict that this would happen, I am sure Karsai knew what his own action would have caused. While the preacher deserve blame, why isn't anyone pointing their fingers to the president of Afghanistan? I think the idea that he is a reasonable partner for the U.S. and NATO has been proven to be completely false.