If they're going to shut down the government...

...then I say really shut down the government: send EVERYBODY, and I mean everybody, home. 

Tell the soldiers overseas to make the best of it because they won't be getting any supplies (food, uniforms, transport, or weapons), until the government reopens. 

Tell anybody who receives federal assistance, there will be nothing coming their way, until the government reopens.

Tell everybody there'll be no mail.

Open the doors of the federal prisons because we certainly can 't pay the guards.  (Good news, Gitmo detainees and white collar criminals!) 

Shut down the federal monuments, the museums, and all national parks, until the government reopens. 

Tell ALL federal employees -- including all levels of all three branches of government -- that, until the government reopens, there will be no paychecks, no health insurance, no compensation of any kind....

If they're gonna do it, then they gotta do it right.

Of course, if the brave souls that are our Congress (I'm surprised I can even type those words!) ever  REALLY shut down the government (and let just a whiff of the reality waft toward the American people), not a single elected official would EVER be returned to his/her post again.

Stop posturing.  Make a deal.  Solve a real problem for a change.

What President Obama should REALLY say to Congress tonight in his State of the Union Address

From the final verse of "Loves Me Like a Rock":

"Who do...
Who do you think your fooling?
I got the Presidential Seal
I'm up on the Presidential Podium
My mama loves
She loves me
She gets down on her knees and hugs me
And she loves me like a rock
She rocks me like the rock of ages
and she loves me!"

"And that made all the difference" (or should that be "sum")

Recently Congress mandated a "net price calculator." As an article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed states:

"Congress mandated the new feature last year to give prospective students a clear idea of the actual cost to attend each institution. The net figure will be derived from total cost—tuition, fees, room, board, and other expenses—minus average aid from all sources of grants (but not loans).

Colleges will be required to display the figures through a net-price calculator, a tool they will create on their Web sites."

How "clear" an idea exactly will students get from such a number?

My question is: Can schools factor in the cost to students -- if the don't attend (or attend a more, or less, prestigious university): career earnings potential, the trouble they may get into outside of school; the lectures, classes, and parties they'll never attend; other lost opportunities?

Come to think of it this calculator could be a real metaphysical wake-up call.

A financial rendering of "The Road Not Taken"!

Now THAT would be a tool worth puttin' on a website.

It's All Up to Us

Last week I gave a talk about Frank Sinatra to the local Senior Club and had U.S. Representative Chris Murphy as my opening act.

There's a reason why Sinatra had comedians as lead-ins and not congressmen (although Frank would frequently introduce Sen. Jack Kennedy in the audience at his concerts in Vegas): congressional representatives talk about things that matter to people, but they tend not to please anyone with their answers -- especially when they're talking about Medicare Part D.

He was engaging, informative, knowledgeable, and sincerely interested in fixing the system, all the qualities one wants in a representative, but short of saying he had just completely abolished the administrative red tape associated with signing up for or switching specific plans, he wasn't telling them much they really wanted to know.

Talk about a tough audience...and thanks for the warm up, Chris!

His speaking that day did give me the chance to mention to his aide that, if health insurance reform is on the way, I had the song for him. It was written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, donated to the Good Health Association of North Carolina, and recorded by Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore on 11/7/46.

Entitled "It's All Up To You (To Make North Carolina Number One in Good Health)," the song is an excellent example of what health care reform needs in the US (and something that the Clinton Health Care Reform attempt in the early 1990s simply lacked): catchy lyrics to summarize succinctly why it'd be good for ALL of us.

Consider this:

..if we do this, we will be the state
where the weak grow strong
and the strong grow great.