Rich
I have never said there wasn’t a problem with our health care system, but government is not the answer.

I did not say my wife preferred uninsured over insured. I said she preferred uninsured over the West County rich people, so don’t twist my words.

Think what you want about me, don’t really care.

Bigger government means less freedoms of choice, more waste, abuse and fraud, and that I am against.

You are not going to change my mind, and I am not going change yours. Just look back in history and see who has the most accomplishments, governments or the people. I am done.

JD–You are almost as bad as those sicko liberals

JD-finally you’ve stated your problem with Single-payer Universal Health Care. “less freedom of choice, more waste, abuse and fraud”. SPUHC gives you freedom of choice in doctors, hospitals, and course of treatment as prescribed by the doctor you choose. The rationing of health care in Canada is directly related to underfunding. They pay half as much as we do and cover all their citizens. We pay twice as much and have 15% of our people uninsured. So using their model if we continue to pay at the same rate we could cover everyone AND eliminate the rationing which we also have in the U.S. Among the many reasons they pay so much less is that the single-payer system eliminates a lot of administrative costs. Last time you had to have something done, how many bills did you receive from your doctor, the lab, the pharmacy, the surgical team, the anesthesiologist? And all for the same procedure. Talk about waste of paper. I’m still getting billed from the 2 separate surgeries I had in Nov. of last year. I’ve got a 2 inch thick stack of paperwork and I have both a primary and secondary insurer. SPUHC eliminates most of the paperwork and redundant billing which by the way makes it easier to detect fraud and abuse. Not to mention that we no longer have to waste all that extra money on advertising for pharmaceuticals that the big drug companies so conveniently mislabel as Research and Development. Not to mention that we can also negotiate with drug companies for better prices. Your conservative heroes in congress rammed that one through to help bankrupt Medicare.

But your mind is made up. I used to think like you about government, because talk radio and conservative bumper sticker slogans sound so good. Until you actually question their wisdom and find out that most of conservative philosophy is based on false premises. Greed is good, the Freemarket should decide, deregulate everything to keep the government off our backs, the private sector does everything better. It’s all a load of crap and you guys just don’t admit it, or you lie about it. I don’t believe any one system holds all the answers, but for a given problem some work better than others. Conservatives just deny the problems they create and demonize the solutions that they don’t have the intelligence to come up with. That’s what is immoral.

JD-what kind of argument is Who has more accomplishments people or government? In the U.S. WE THE PEOPLE are the government. Setting that aside if you’re serious. Who built the interstates, the bridges, dams, water and sewage treatment plants, put men on the moon, stopped the spread of smallpox and malaria here, built the Panama Canal, created the internet and world wide web, the atom bomb, educated billions of people, conquered Nazi Germany and the Axis powers? I could go on for hours. Where’s your list?

Rich,

I’d love to get solar, but the upfront costs make it unlikely anytime soon.I’m not keen to finance something like that, especially these days.From what I have read, geothermal would only be about 10 grand,so it will be one of the first higher-ticket items we do.We hope to be at this house(1893 Victorian farmhouse on three acres) forever, so the investment would be worth it.I have looked into CitizenRenu for rented solar panels, but the lack of net-metering in this area at this time means I’ll probably have to wait.I don’t really think off-grid will be our goal, although we are leaning in the direction of a mostly sustainable lifestyle.

I have planted blueberries, rasberries, blackberries, Saskatoon berries(serviceberries that taste like blueberries)strawberries,pawpaws,fruit trees,almonds, and hazelnuts,plus raised vegetable beds and many berry bushes and wildflowers for the birds. My approach to gardening is if you aren’t going over the top, why bother? My husband does a lot(but not all) of the grunt work, and I do the planning and planting(my daughters like to help with this)- it sounds like a lot of work, but once we have everything established it won’t be hard to take care of. It will offset some of our food needs, but right now I don’t think we’ll be able to produce everything we need.

I found the idea of pond-scum biodiesel very interesting.I had looked into the used vegetable oil biodiesel, but we don’t have diesel vehicles, and there were too many potential problems at that point to pursue it as an option.There are DIY kits to make your own biodiesel, but some states require you to pay gas taxes on stuff like that, and it just sounded too time-consuming and complicated to do-probably why it never really caught on.I know Wash.U. has some ongoing research into alternative fuels, but I’m not too familiar with what they are doing.The problem with the alternatives is that so many people are unwilling to change until forced to,even if better options already exist. I recall that a philospher once said”Change is not accomplished without inconvenience, even from worse to better”, so as long as there is one drop of oil anywhere in the world, they will refuse to accept that change is neccessary,evil or not.Escalating gas prices may be the incentive needed to get this country moving in the direction it should have gone thirty years ago, and many more people I talk to these days are starting to realize that.I am in no way saying I am happy with the current situation,just that it didn’t take a psychic to see this coming.Americans as a society need to be adaptable and be willing to become more self-sufficient to get through the current hard times.Some of us will do fine, but many seem to expect the government to have all the answers and to fix all the problems, and I don’t think they have ever been able to do that, nor should they be expected to.Many forget that responsibility comes with the freedom we hold dear.Our teenage son is learning that now,but he forgets our home is not a democracy, it’s a benevolent dictatorship :)It is unfortunate that all too often legislation is needed to enforce what common sense should dictate,but then common sense isn’t very common these days.

GG-Do you have or have room for a pond on your place? If you have a deep enough pond (that stays a minimum depth year round, I think about 10 ft.), you can use it for geothermal heat exchange field and then it can do extra duty for raising fish, or pond-scum biodiesel or possibly both. Much cheaper than drilling wells or even trenching if you already have one. Don’t know the costs of pond construction though.

We have a very small lot, but my wife has planted a miniature Shaw’s garden. We tried to grow pawpaws from seed, but no luck, let me know your secret. I had never eaten one till just a few years ago or persimmons either for that matter. They really are good if you can get them. Pawpaws belong to the custard apple family, doesn’t that even sound tasty?

Rich,

I got the pawpaws as seedlings through a nursery catalog last year, so I have a ways to go with them.I have heard they can be difficult to transplant.I think I’ll try to squeeze a few more in,though.They do sound tasty, but I have never even seen them at a farmer’s market. If you are using seed, they may need to be cold-stratified by storing in the fridge for a few weeks or months before planting to mimic winter.I don’t usually start much except wildflowers from seed ’cause I’ve never had any luck at it.I joined a garden club to try to overcome that handicap.We have gotten lots of compliments on the landscaping from people driving by,but this place was really neglected when we bought it, so anything would have been an improvement.

I actually plan to do a small wildlife and swimming pond(kind of a natural swimming pool like they do in Europe), but it isn’t going to be too close to the house.We have two acres in a divided pasture for our horses, so that area is pretty much off-limits as it is cheaper to grow grass than buy hay right now.We are also looking to start harvesting rainwater as soon as we find suitable(and inexpensive!) containers for my husband to modify.We’ve only been here two years, and initially the neighbors thought I was kind of radical(maybe an enviro-nut? ha-ha- I may have that put on a t-shirt someday) and maybe a bit odd, but they are asking more questions and even following our lead on some of the energy efficiency projects we’ve done.They even had my husband install radiant barrier housewrap under their new siding,as we had done last year, to help reduce air conditioning costs, and are talking about repainting the interior with the insulating paint additve.I don’t mind educating people on some of the money and environment saving things I have learned, but I doubt most people follow through.I figure it’s their loss.I don’t think I do anything out of the ordinary except I don’t wait for someone else to do it first,I have no problem being the first on the road or even in this area to adopt new technology if it benefits my bottom line and the environment.I don’t have the funds to do much for purely environmental reasons,I wish I did, but until we win the lottery… I guess I’ll just keep reading and doing whatever will benefit us the most.It’s working so far

GG-Pawpaws taste a little like banana-strawberry. They don’t travel well like a lot of regional fruits, so you don’t see them in grocery stores. You’ll be lucky if the squirrels and raccoons and possums don’t eat them all, before you get a chance to harvest. We mashed them up and used them to flavor home-made ice cream. It was really good. I like to look at really old cookbooks for recipes for stuff like pawpaws, you never know what ideas you’ll find, or be inspired to try. Another unique thing about them is they BROWN flowers. Not too many plants do that. Offhand I can only think of irises and maybe trillium, and I’m not so sure about trillium.