Question about Questions

What are your questions these days? Please post them :)

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Questions about our planet

So, even if congressional folk sincerely think the data doesn't prove that global warming is yet in a crisis state, or that the USA can make a significant contribution toward slowing down global warming, why wouldn't they act to err on the side of safety rather than on the side of recklessness (by omitting effective action)? The stakes are high.

What can individuals and small groups do to make a difference in global warming? Could we each work with our local governments to qualify as cool cities? Can we ask spokespeople who say we're not in crisis to give us statistics that rival those presented in Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth"?

Questions about Congressional process

How can voters have a say on how responsibly our senators and congresspeople pass bills?

Would it help if, to sign a bill, all senators and congresspeople would have to sign off on a line that says he or she has read the whole bill and agrees with the whole bill?

Would this lead to shorter bills with less pork? Or at least to curtail representatives' tendencey to pass the buck in terms of personal responsibility?

If not, what process would require representatives to take on personal responsiblity for the whole of a given vote?

Questions about memorials in DC

I have sat with pride in the Lincoln Memorial, felt the beauty of the US social experiment at the Jefferson Memorial, cried for an hour at the Vietnam Memorial, and look forward to seeing the World War II memorial to peole like my dad.

Still I ask: Why are almost all our national memorials about war and fighters? Why are there no monuments to public servants or to peacemakers? Do these folk not also significantly contribute to the health and safety of US society?

Would memorials to other kinds of contributors to US society broaden our views on who has historically helped our country to flourish?

If so, what would they be? Union organizers? Feminists? Peacemakers? Civil Servants? . . . If not, why not?

Questions about health Insurance

Why is health insurance presumed to be necessary in the so-called debates over how to make health care affordable? Are there studies on cost and service benefits of other systems? For example, what would it cost to have doctors and other medical folk be paid fair wages, and payment come from our federal tax coffers, so that insurance was not needed at all? What would that scenario look like and how good quality care be ensured under such systems?

Does the label "socialist" for healthcare mean anything to you? If so, what?

Who is served by not controlling healthcare costs?
Would a system in which the government paid for healthcare directly, without an insurance system, be more socialist than the current system that doesn't work for everyone and barely works for those eligible? If so, in what ways?
Would it change the number of jobs in the health care industry? Would our economy be damaged by rapid phasing out of this area of the insurance industry, which is major loanee to major building projects, for example?

What are some of your experiences with current systems?

Whew!