Who Is Cowtown Pattie?

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I was Lillie Langtry in another life, and might have a crush on Calamity Jane.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Bread and Water - It's What's For Dinner For Grannie




I'll bet your hometown paper hasn't been very vocal about an upcoming vote in the US Senate on a bill that is cleverly designed to rip Social Security and Medicare to tiny minuscule shreds. I've seen nothing on the various nightly news programs either.

Ronni, at Time Goes By, has blogged a couple of times to alert her readers, and I would be amiss not to pass this important message on. Tomorrow is the National Call-In Day to express your views. Easy to participate in this little adventure in democracy. Do it. (See TGB today for instructions on how).

I've written not only to my senator, John Cornyn, but also to all of my federal representatives to express my deep anger over Senate Bill 2853. (Click here to email him).

It gives me ulcers to think how Congress could easily change my rapidly approaching future elder years. Kman and I have paid our taxes regularly, worked and paid them since we were in high school (nearly 40 years worth and will continue for another minimum of 13 years or more hinging on our health). Due to several factors, some in our control but most not, we will be heavily dependent upon our monthly Social Security checks and Medicare insurance once we are unable to work. We are trying to rectify and ameliorate this, but there isn't enough time in our working years to avoid being dependent on these programs.

Social Security and Medicare would simply mean we could at least "get by" unless either of us were faced with some major horrific debilitating illness. If Medicaid is slashed along with Social Security and Medicare, and I hate to even suggest this, but self-euthanasia (suicide) might be the last alternative to living on the streets.

Why isn't Congress working on reducing our outrageous military expenditures? Oceans and oceans of dollars being thrown overseas with nary a sign of of an end or workable solution in sight, but certainly at a larger cost to those soldiers who either never come home alive, or return with missing body parts to a shattered life. Youth ill-spent on a skewed ideology. But, I digress..another day on this topic.

As a glass half-empty person these days where my government is concerned, I have a foreboding feeling about the future of our elder population. Too bad we can't force those government representatives who have the power to change so many lives into the lifestyle situation faced by our nation's elders. Let those who wield the power live on a lone Social Security check with no other viable income. Wonder how long they would survive without their L & L fixes(Lattes and Lexus), nevermind those days of no food or medicine.

Won't happen, of course. Fat cats always dine on caviar and champagne, courtesy of lazy citizens and the protection of a system gone bad.

5 comments:

Ronni Bennett said...

"Lazy citizens" in your last sentence is important. We can't be lazy about this. The bill would have terrible consequences for many years to come.

Thanks for joining in to get out the word, Pattie.

Kay Dennison said...

Amen!!!!! I live on a lone Social Security check and it isn't pretty or fun. And I can't talk about the horrors of Medicaid -- my blood pressure can't handle it!!!!

Darlene said...

My only income is S. S. and if they cut it I will be up the creek without a paddle.

I called my Senators, for all the good it will do since my two are the two right wing Johns. McCain and Kyle.

Joe out west but not for long. said...

Today, when it started to become clear that the deciding vote in Health Care Reform was likely going to go to a Republican in the Mass. Special Election, Health Care Provider stocks were up 4.1% overall.
That's in 1 day - 4.1%.

I guess they got what they paid for.

Welcome to America. Bend Over.

Cowtown Pattie said...

Darlene, I can imagine the scary place you are in right now...and you too, Kay.

Joe - Since I own a few of those medical stocks (we're talkin' less than peanuts...), at least I might have got kissed!