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Opinion
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- Written by: Mark Burkdoll
Growing up it was the "Three Bs," as our mom called us – Mom, myself and my younger sister.
We were latch key kids decades before the term was invented. While mom was at work, we would walk home from elementary school and "take care of ourselves" till mom came home. One time Sarah ran ahead and came back to report she saw a ghost peering out the window at her. Going into the house, I had to put on my cowboy six shooters to assure myself I could handle that ghost.
In high school, Sarah had a way of just knowing if I was talking to someone whose name I did not remember, then she would make a point of coming up and say, "Aren’t you going to introduce me?"
Later in life we went on an adventure vacation together, to Burma and Thailand. While walking along a river in Burma I told her, "Don’t turn around but there is a guy with a gun behind us." Sisters never mind and of course she looked and the solider told us to turn back.
Sarah retired from Schwab as a stockbroker but for her spirit her career was the two years she worked in Yosemite.
Her husband Dean and her were very much in love and shared their passion for the outdoors and antique Airstream trailers.
Sarah Burkdoll: Feb. 21, 1955, to Aug. 27, 2009.
Mark Burkdoll lives in Clearlake.
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- Written by: Luisa Acosta
Val Muchowski, vice president of education and training for the California NWPC, and Dotty LeMieux principle of Green Dog Campaigns, provided in-depth, interesting and educational training on the “nuts and bolts” of a campaign from start to finish.
In addition to the great training presented, there was a panel discussion that included Clearlake City Council woman Joyce Overton, Lakeport City Council woman Suzanne Lyons, Upper Lake High School Board Member Annie Barnes and Nice Mutual Water District Board candidate Debbie Clark.
Luisa Acosta is president of the Lake County National Women’s Political Caucus.
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- Written by: Deb Baumann
During the time my parents were raising five children on a shoestring budget, we kids shared rooms, shared clothes, shared toys, and no one could stretch a food dollar farther than my mom. But, by golly, we never lacked health care. Regular checkups at the doctor, regular dental visits, and whenever one of us rambunctious sports-obsessed kids broke a bone or required emergency care or hospitalization, we got it. My parents never worried about paying the medical bills. Heck, they never even SAW a medical bill.
Our family enjoyed full dental and medical benefits, courtesy of the US government.
Where did this wonder of socialized medicine occur? Right here in the US of A. I was a military brat.
Recently I was talking to a friend about an emergency surgery and hospital stay. When she told me how much it cost her, I was shocked.
"I thought you had health insurance!" I exclaimed.
"We do," she replied.
But even someone paying for health insurance can still face financial catastrophe, when illness or accident strike.
I have a better understanding of what my coworkers used to say, during the year I lived and worked in Canada: "How can you Americans live like that? Never knowing when the day will come that an accident or medical diagnosis could ruin your life financially?"
My Canadian coworkers were full of sympathy for us poor Americans, held hostage as we are by a bloated, arrogant, anti-competitive insurance industry.
Across America today, rude mobs are disrupting town halls, making intelligent dialogue impossible, screaming "We don't want socialized medicine!" They have been whipped into this hysteria by deliberate misinformation and outright lies, a millions-of-dollars-a-day campaign of deception financed by the insurance industry.
Insurance companies do not want Americans to have a choice. ANY choice will result in less profit for the Insurance Industry. ANY competition will challenge insurers to lower their own rates and provide better service (Heaven forbid!)
Even scarier for the insurance industry, if the public option is implemented and it proves to be successful … Well, you can see how much the insurance industry could lose. They may have to get real jobs. Instead of continuing their present status as parasitic bloodsuckers who devour one-third of all health care dollars spent in America, while providing nothing in the way of actual, useful, necessary services.
The insurance industry has held Americans financially hostage for too long. Don't believe the lies and deception campaign designed to derail what is best for Americans.
The insurance industry is spending obscenely huge amounts of money to defeat real health care reform. And not because they have OUR best interests at heart.
Deb Baumann lives in Upper Lake.
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- Written by: Ed Benner
Congress is once again going after the benefits we earned serving our country. Modifications to Tricare for Life (TFL) and Tricare are right up there near the top of options to pay for health care reform.
The following is a link to the Congressional Book of Options, which describe what they want to take away from us: http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=9925 . That link should also be of benefit to those on Medicare.
Use a show of force by besieging Congress with e-mail, faxes and phone calls. Every response is a step towards keeping what we earned.
Ed Benner, US Air Force retired, lives in Clearlake.