THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

OLD VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.' Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, 'We shall overcome.'
Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it and the ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY. Be careful how you vote in 2010.

The Bacus Health Care Plan

Like it or not, this is what you may get if you don't speak up:

Like other versions of ObamaCare, the Baucus Plan proposes to:

• Impose an Individual Mandate. All Americans will be required to purchase health insurance designed by special interests, lobbyists and Congress. Americans who elect not to fall in line will face a penalty of up to $3,800.
• Impose a De Facto Employer Mandate. Although not described as an employer mandate in the legislation, the Baucus Plan will require employers with more than 50 employees to pay a $400 tax for each full-time uninsured employee.
• Mandate a 'Healthy' Lifestyle. The Baucus plan will provide Medicaid and Medicare patients with incentives for healthy living, as defined by the federal government. Of course, this means that the federal government would directly encourage and discourage American lifestyle choices.
• Instruct Doctors on Best Practices. Under the guise of encouraging cost savings, the Baucus Plan proposes to create an "Innovation Center" which will instruct doctors as to how they should work together in the treatment of their patients.
• Punish Hospitals for Readmitted Patients. In an effort to control cost and ensure quality, the Baucus Plan proposes to pay hospitals 20% less if a patient is readmitted to the hospital. Of course, this proposal will instead encourage hospitals to keep patients longer and discourage patients from returning for care after they are released.
• Tax Expensive Plans. The Baucus Plan will impose a 35% excise tax on insurance which exceeds $8,000 for individuals or $21,000 for families.
• Ignore Tort Reform. Despite the widespread belief among the American public and the medical community that tort reform would save billions of dollars and reduce the practice of defensive medicine, the Baucus Plan addresses the subject of tort reform only long enough to meekly express concern through a "Sense of the Senate" resolution.
• Undermine Health Savings Accounts (HSA). The Baucus Plan would limit the amount that employers and employees can contribute to HSAs. Moreover, the Plan would double the tax penalty on individuals who withdraw HSA funds for non-medical expenses.
• Deplete Medicare. Millions of America's senior citizens will see a significant reduction in the quality of their health care coverage. Roughly $500 billion in Medicare will be transferred to younger Americans and Medicare Advantage will be destroyed completely.
• Push Americans to Public Insurance. The Baucus Plan will cause millions of families to move from private coverage - where they currently enjoy broad access - to Medicaid and S-CHIP - where they will enjoy limited access. Moreover, millions more will lose their employment-based private coverage and instead obtain insurance in an artificial market (an "Exchange") in which insurers have perverse incentives to underprovide to the sickest patients.

Click on title about to see what you can do about it.

HAPA Concert at the Great Park

Superb Hawaiian music, hula dancing and guitar playing last night. These YouTube videos do not do it justice. It was the largest crowd ever for the free Saturday night concerts - 4,000 in attendance.

Double Header Concerts

There's nothing like two free concerts on a Saturday evening. First Debi and I attended the last of the summer concerts on the lake in Woodbridge Village. It was The Rat Pack tribute group featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. We packed wine and a lite dinner for the event.



Then it was off to the Great Park for Niyaz, a taste of Persian music. There was standing room only as Irvine has a large Iranian population.

17 Hippies Concert

The newly evolving Orange County Great Park puts on these free concerts in August and September. The OC Great Park is on the site of the old MCAS El Toro. (Marine Corps Air Station) There are also free tethered baloon rides.



The 17 Hippies is a group from Berlin. They play a selection of French tunes, English ballads and other internation songs in a genre tah I characterize as a mix of hillbilly and gypsie.