“The Rest of the Story” On Immigration and Health Care

The real politics of political positions on these issues

This column presents a conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now - the subject of the week.


As we all know, during numerous recent elections, the margin of victory has been by only a few percentage points of the voters taking part in the process. The nation is obviously almost evenly divided between liberals and conservatives, those favoring increased government control and influence vs. those who wish to reduce the size and scope of governments.

In this situation, the addition of a few million voters to one side or the other can assure victory for the party realizing the gain. I would suspect that the group promoting amnesty for the estimated 15,000,000 illegal aliens living in the U.S. are not really promoting this move out of a humanitarian, sympathetic motivation. They are promoting this approach because they see this group as a potential impetus of millions of additional voters who favor their side, and this addition would assure continuation of their power over our government and its coffers of money.

In my opinion, the same condition is true when they talk of expansion of entitlements, especially health care. They see those 30,000,000 uninsured people as future voters, if they can only win their favor by giving them free health care. Again, the move is not motivated out of a zeal for humanity, a caring spirit, a liberal love for fellow man…..the move is inspired because those added votes would expand their power base and assure future control of the course of the nation.

Although the speeches and rhetoric may sound noble of cause and may engender feelings of sympathy and response to need…..it is best to remember the underlying motivation and probable results if the majority of voters align with the pleas to help those poor, uninsured masses.

In reality, no one in America has to go without needed health care. They may not be able to go to the exact doctor they wish, but free care is available. Personally, I would be for increasing the scope and services of the Public Health Departments across the nation. They could provide 24-7 medical services to the qualified patients, and thus provide those people somewhere to go for routine care on weekends and evenings instead of the Hospital Emergency Rooms. This would save millions of dollars, and would put the costs where they should be.

Rudiments: Odds and Ends Worth Mentioning-

● Keeping my new year’s resolution to always say something nice….I applaud Main Street Marianna for organizing and sponsoring the St. Pats Day festival in downtown Marianna this weekend. They “Got it Right!” These events help bond the community together……and they are fun!

● I feel that if a group of concerned Marianna business owners got together and made a united appeal to the City Commission, we could get the Board to revisit the existing sign ordinance. As it is written it obviously has shortcomings which need to be improved.

● I also applaud the Jackson County School Board for exploring alternatives to their health benefit programs in an effort to lower costs. I hope they are successful in this effort. (Oops! I accidently said TWO nice things this week.)

● If in these “greenway” programs being created by the City of Marianna and the County Government, they build public boat ramps with tax payer money to increase access to the Chipola River, and make these ramps exclusive to the launching of canoes and kayaks, I feel they would be doing an injustice to the small motorized boat fisherman who would also wish to gain this easier river access. I question the legality of favoring one population segment of river users to the detriment of another, while using public funding. I would urge all of our Chipola River bream fishermen to get involved in this issue. We need to be sure they “Get This Right”.



Note: The opinions stated in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Hatcher Publications.