Sitting On My Porch Part Eighty Seven

2013 has gotten off to a rocky start. First, my take home pay was reduced when the Medicaid tax cut expired. Second, my take home pay was reduced when my private insurance went up again just because they could do it. The only thing more expensive in this country than potential illness is actually being sick. Maybe I’ll get some of that money back when the insurance exchanges kick in next year. I’m not optimistic about it since I live in Louisiana and our governor seems to be trying to do all he can to make sure everyone has to pay as much as possible for healthcare. 

When I found out that our insurance at work was going up again I thought about not signing those papers. I figured I’m young enough where I could make it a year or two without coverage. The extra few hundred dollars in my pocket would be good. I eventually sucked it up and agreed to keep paying because anything can happen in life no matter how old you are and if I really needed medical attention I would rather be faced with coming up with the money to cover the portion my insurance won’t or going into complete financial ruin by having to pay for everything. After the country almost broke out in another civil war behind healthcare legislation a few years ago, the fact people are still making these kinds of decisions makes all that seem like a big waste of time.

Now we are all in the middle of the sequester drama. I don’t think my job is affected in the short term but who knows what the future holds. I guess it will depend on how Congress and the president feel about the homeless. There's 96 million in cuts to homeless assistance programs so I guess they don't feel that good about it. I'm sure if the budget was slashed and my position was eliminated I can get one of those great private sector jobs if the freeloaders who are laid off sooner haven't taken them all. Everyone in Louisiana will have a great job from a Fortune 500 company once the governor frees them from the burden of corporate taxes so I'm not worried.

I don’t really understand why Democrats would have ever agreed to this in the first place unless they wanted it to happen. Nothing has forced Congress to move from any of their positions on spending in the last few years. They gave in a little during the Fiscal Cliff crisis and were acting like they sold out all of their values. They weren't moving on the sequester deal. I think they threw the military cuts in the deal to give the GOP a reason to cooperate and even that didn’t work. It seems like he’s been talked into more unnecessary financial crisis and every time his opponents get more and more of that they want.  He gave up his biggest playing card when he didn’t let the Bush tax cuts expire. He would have had the same hate towards him and the same attacks on his character only with half the deficit that would be steadily shrinking. I support the president but something is wrong when he can't get one long term financial deal done while President Bush got two wars funded, a tax cut, and a bank bailout while the deficit was growing. It makes you think the current administration is taking the wrong approach. I'm not smart enough to know what the right approach is but the current one doesn't seem to be working. 

I always have a lot on my mind and I used to write about it to let it out. I’ve shared a lot of my personal feelings with the public. I’ve tried not to do that as much lately. Sometimes I think about some of the blogs I posted and how personal they were. I’m not sure if I would write some of the things I did in 2006 and 2007 in 2013. When I first started blogging social media and self appointed spokespersons weren’t as out of control as they are now. There are two issues that I have a problem with. The first is that people can take something you say out of context and run with it without you having a chance to explain yourself. I guess that’s the price you pay for sharing your opinions in the first place. The other issue is some people are labeling themselves as an example of a particular way of life or ideology. There are a lot of people trying to become famous by being the voice of the “intelligent black man”, or the “strong black woman”, or the “New Orleans expert”, “black fathers”, or “the hood” and any other niche you could think of. I never wrote anything to try to be the voice of any of these things.  I’m just trying to be Cliff and not mess that up too much.

I don’t have a lot of guys in my inner circle. I’ve never made close friends with guys that easy. I had more friends when I was younger but life and time has made that number even less. I value those guys like family so to lose one is a devastating blow. A few weeks ago I lost one of them in a truck accident and the world seems a lot less fun. I want to close this post by saying rest in peace to Black Chris. I think about him every time I have a really crazy thought during the day and I need someone to share it with. I don’t think I’m ever going to have that kind of routine with another friend again because I wouldn’t let anyone cuss at me the way he did.