A Dear John Letter to the Democrats

You’ve taken me for granted, haven’t you? Women have been a core constituency of yours and now we’re deserting you. Wondering what you did wrong? I heard you were telling yourself we wanted to spend more time with the girls—you know, Sarah Palin and the other cool chicks—but that’s ridiculous. We didn’t even like girls like her in school.

You and me, we never got married. I always stayed unaffiliated, but all the same, I never voted for anyone else. I never even dated anyone else. I’m not sure I’ve ever even slept with a Republican. It just didn’t sound like any fun.

So, I won’t be voting for them, even if you tell me it’s the same thing. But for the first time in my life, I don’t think I’ll actually be voting for many of you. I know, I know. I’ve heard all the arguments about opting out of democracy. I’ve even made them time and again. But I think I’m going to try celibacy for a while. Wake me up when it’s over.

Oh, you’re asking why? Well, you never call, you never write. Then, every six months or so, you send this slick, handsome guy to sweet talk me, on TV usually, or on a whirlwind tour though my state. He’s hot all right, and he says all the right things. But it’s always too little, too late, and (in)actions speak louder than words. Mom always said so, and you know what? She was right.

One thing I’ve noticed about you, and the same is true about the other party, is that you don’t know or care about the middle class. Oh, you get the poor, and you get the rich, but you don’t get me. When you talked about healthcare, you were all about insuring the poor. Don’t get me wrong, I think they need access to medical care, and I guess it’s all just as well, because by the time you get around to me, I’ll be among them anyway.

I just read that China and India will be buying up U.S. coal, and apparently you will allow this to happen. That means the cost of power will go up, which means the cost of everything will go up for middle-class people like me. Of course, I would like it if we didn’t need so much coal, but I can’t trust you to be effective at leading the switch to renewables. And anyway, we need our coal today in order to manufacture enough wind turbines and solar arrays to deliver our future power needs. I was expecting you to have started doing way more of that already, by the way. Selling off our coal advances neither economic nor environmental recovery, and it shows how little attention you are paying to anything.

You might not have been the one who got me into this mess, but you sure kicked me when I was down, and I’m not going to forgive you. I’m going to the polls, because I believe in voting, but I won’t be voting for most of the mainline candidates.

I saw an ad from recently from the Democratic party with a bunch of people saying how they “just can’t” vote for a Republican senatorial candidate in Colorado. Neither can I. But I just can’t support you, either.

I can’t stand being taken for granted.

Withholding Benefits on New Hires

This’ll be a short post because I’m nearly speechless. It’s bad enough to be without a job. But it turns out people who are finally getting them are being told that there’s a waiting period before they can have benefits. Three, and in some cases, six months. Before they can have health insurance.

I’ve experienced this practice with 401(k)s, and that was obnoxious enough, with all the job hopping we’ve had to do in the past 10 years and the spottiness this has led to regarding our retirement savings. But health insurance? Um, what are people and their families supposed to do? It’s pretty hard as it is with companies not paying for dependent premiums, which can run  to outlays of $700-$900 per family per month (think of all the college savings that’s not happening because of this), which if you’re a teacher or work in public child welfare or something can eat close to half your salary.

Meanwhile, what are these families supposed to do if something happens in those first months on the job? And how are they covering prescription meds, especially if their savings have been exhausted by long periods of unemployment and COBRA expenditures? I was just wondering, because this new-hire situation just happened to someone I know and I’d never heard of it before.

I’ve got a feeling that #hcr is not going to address this issue.