Happy Thanksgiving!

Cost of Living Increase...

My mom has been complaining for years that the Social Security cost of living increase (COLA) is eaten up by Medicare associated increased expenses. The reason this happens is that health care costs have been expanding at a double digit percentage annually for quite some time.Recently I’ve had my first experience with this phenomenon. In late October the SSA announced the increase for this coming year would be 3.3%.
Yesterday having been informed what the new Medicare associated costs would be I was able to calculate the new amounts. The new Medicare associated costs for me take up 86% of the COLA.
WOW!

Throw the Bums Out!

Some thoughts on the election:

Do you know who got more votes in Allegheny County than Rick Santorum besides Bob Casey?
Lynn Swann..the former Steeler got 22,718 more votes than the # 3 Republican Senator did, 40 % to 35 % in his loss to Governor Ed Rendell.

In this household we were happy to see a local “brown shirted” twerp who had yet to have a real job as an adult be defeated by a 59% to 40% margin for a seat in the General Assembly.
This 21 year old Santorum “clone” bombarded our mailbox with two or three pieces of glossy advertising every day for the past 6 weeks (and thus contributed to the destruction of approximately 50 acres of forest land) besides being responsible for the majority of those annoying political phone calls we had to endure leading up to the election.

Mike Veon, the Democrat from Beaver County who was the only one not to vote to repeal the “middle of the night pay raise” in the legislature, lost to Republican Jim Marshall 54% to 46% who ran a mostly low profile campaign. In one of the clearest examples of campaign advertising 'stupidity' I've ever seen, Veon went with an expensive TV campaign primarily using an ad which proffered his opponent’s name repeatedly to voters who were waiting for the opportunity to vote against him in the general election!

My Congressman Dr. Tim Murphy, one of the good guys in the House of Representatives, was reelected easily despite the Post Gazette‘s endorsement of his opponent.

Oh, the “spam” candidate mentioned in a previous post got a little less than 14 % of the vote in his head to head race with an incumbent Democratic legislator.