December Sundries

The 9/11 First Responders bill, aimed at providing additional healthcare coverage for the people who risked their lives in responding to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, is purportedly being held up by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).  I don't want to sound too Grinch-like here, but I have a few questions.

1) Why does this have to be done now?  This bill, or others like it, has been floating around Congress for nine years.  This should wait until it can be fully debated in a more responsible Congress.
2) The original price tag on this bill was for $9 billion dollars.  It's dropped to just over $6 billion to get more people to sign on.  The legislation covers approximately 50,000 workers and their families.  Have the needs of these people dropped by $3 billion dollars or was the price inflated to begin with?
3) The people this bill covers are public employees, mostly union, who have the best and most expensive healthcare plans available to anyone on earth (except for those serving in Congress).  Why are those plans now suddenly inadequate?
4)  When will Congress stop funding every perceived victim of every perceived disaster, like they are the nation's insurance company.  Stuff happens!  Nobody was wronged.  Reparations aren't always necessary.

I was watching CNBC yesterday and they were promoting a show to be aired later that night about the "looming crisis" of student financial aid.  From the promo, it was clear that the real target of this story was going to be "for-profit" schools, who apparently prey on the poor, and otherwise unsuspecting students, who sign up for expensive courses they can never repay.  The host of the show alarmingly claimed that the default rate for student loans in the "for-profit" industry was 48%.  Wouldn't that mean then that the majority of students defaulting on their loans were attending non-profit, government supported schools?

I was watching Fox News this morning and they showed a clip from Monday of ABC News' Diane Sawyer interviewing Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  She asked him about his thoughts on the seriousness of the recent arrests of 12 terror suspects in London this past weekend.  He was stumped.  Hadn't heard a thing about it.  Don't you feel safer knowing this man is in charge or our nation's security?