A CLOSE LOOK AT A TEA PARTY/REPUBLICAN AMERICA

With midterm elections just under a month away, and with a sizable share of the electorate actively contemplating voting for Tea Party and conservative Republican candidates, I thought it might be useful to portray in pictures what a radically changed Tea Party / Republican America might look like should they gain control and implement their policies...

Those on the far right don't believe in social programs. They think they coddle the poor. Therefore, they would love to cut back on or eradicate programs like Welfare and Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). They believe the "free market" approach of giving the wealthy huge tax breaks will create massive employment and prosperity. WE all know otherwise, but the Tea Party/conservative Republican message to these poor kids and their parents would be simply "get a job!"


Tea Party/Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller in Alaska has said that he believes both unemployment benefits and the minimum wage are unconstitutional. Senate candidate Sharron Angle in Nevada has echoed these beliefs, and Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann has even advocated doing away with the minimum wage altogether. Expect more scenes like this if the Tea Party and Republican candidates have their way and do away with both the minimum wage and unemployment benefits.


Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, Delaware Tea Party/conservative Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, and many other teabaggers and conservative Republicans want to privatize Social Security, replacing the safety net we currently have (which works reasonably well) with private retirement funds set up on Wall Street. Nice idea - on paper, at least. But while the elderly would prosper during periods of boom, in periods of bust like we're in right now, they would have little or no money to live on. Do you want future generations of elderly to end up like this guy, a bum on the street subsisting on a liquid alcohol diet? I sure don't!


Tea Party Republican Rand Paul, candidate for Senate in Kentucky, has questioned the constitutionality of federal civil rights laws, and has stated he thinks it is wrong that the federal government can enforce these laws in private businesses and organizations. His belief seems not only unfair, but wildly out of touch and out of date with the mores now held by the overwhelming majority of citizens. Is THIS what we want - a return to a divided, separate but equal America?


ALL the Tea Party and Republican candidates have roundly condemned the President's economic stimulus program and have vowed they will support no more bailouts. Presumably, they would just let our banks go under and our big auto companies go out of business. As they all favor less regulation of business, they would stand by and let the market "fix" itself while millions more would suffer loss of employment and foreclosure. This approach didn't work for Herbert Hoover in 1929, so there is absolutely no reason it would work now or going forward. If these far right people gain power and implement their very flawed economic policy, you had best start saving odds and ends and raw materials so you'll be warm and comfortable when you lose YOUR home and have to start living like THIS poor fellow!


Joe Miller, Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Christine O'Donnell, Marco Rubio (Tea Party/Republican Senate candidate in Florida), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH),, his little parrot House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), as well as Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), have all come out in support of rolling back government regulation of businrss. So if they gain majority power, get ready to hurl like the man at left. For these far right teabaggers and conservatue Republicabs will contribute to even more food poisoning from tainted meat, fish, eggs, poultry, and produce due to lax regulations on our food industry. Donj't worry too much, though - the market will "fix" itself all by itself, just like they claim. Didn't you know that? NOT!


NRA and gun enthusiasts everywhere, let up a cheer! Once Sharron Angle and the other Tea Party/Republican candidates strengthen the Second Amendment even further, there will be no more pesky regulation on handguns and assault rifles. EVERYBODY will be free to exercise his or her "second amendment remedies" whenever and wherever they see fit, and scenes like this at left will be commonplace on every American street. We'll be FAR safer with more guns in more hands, won't we? Just think - now ALL will be able to freely shoot ANY hated Muslim, politician, or even YOU, on sight! Gotta love that second amendment!


Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, and numerous other teabagger/Republican candidates are also making noise about privatizing MEDICARE and the VA, and repealing the Obama health care plan that was just passed. Rather than lowering the cost of health care as all of these conservatives claim, this rash position would actually RAISE the cost of health care! Why? Because in the case of the VA and Medicare, YOU, the consumer, would be paying an additional 15-20% or more to accomodate private profit margin, something you are currently NOT paying. This would make YOU poorer, but would make wealthy stockholders and giant health care providers even wealthier AT YOUR EXPENSE. What's more, insurance companies would once again be able to boot you off coverage at will once you got sick, something the newly-passed Obama plan forbids. Millions now eligible for health care coverage would also again be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions if this plan were repealed. Only wealthy stockholders and insurance companies would gain from a repeal; YOU would LOSE!
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VOTERS BEWARE! THINK TWICE BEFORE VOTING FOR A TEA PARTY OR CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE THIS YEAR! These people will cut your economic throat and further empower big banks, big health insurance, and big pharmaceutical companies AT YOUR EXPENSE! They have NO agenda for job creation or higher wages for those who aren't trust funders or corporate CEOs. Last night, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele was interviewed on MSNBC's new The Last Word show and was unable to answer the question of exactly what the current minimum wage is. Republican billionaire and Senate hopeful from Connecticut Linda McMahon was unable to answer that very same question at a public forum a few days earlier. It is shameful that neither figure had a clue as to what level the minimum wage is at. But what is positively unforgivable is that both believe the federal government should not be able to establish the rate, that it is too high and supposedly hurts business, and that neither really cares about the fact that the minimum wage is not a livable wage. The ONLY salaries these conservatives care about are their own and those of their wealthy peers, NOT yours or mine. These conservative Republicans and teabaggers offer nothing for the vast majority of us who must work for a living! Their tax breaks for the rich will NOT create new high-paying jobs. They never have. They offer nothing for small business or anything that will aid the elderly or poor. These tax breaks will NOT cut our deficit but will actually ADD to it tremendously. These conservatives don't really care about YOU; all they want is power and control for themselves and their wealthy backers. It would be a far wiser course of action to stay with the America we have today, imperfect as it is, and work to IMPROVE it, rather than adopt the rash and radical course of action the abovementioned Tea Party/Republican candidates are offering. THINK ABOUT IT, FELLOW VOTER. A close look at the Tea Party/Republican America yields a dangerously treacherous and undesirable world for all but the very wealthy!

WHAT IF...?

"Many great ideas go unexecuted, and many great executioners are without ideas. One without the other is worthless."
- Tim Blixseth -

"God is not looking for alms. God is looking for action."
- Bono -

"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin -


We are often a nation of complacent and sometimes cowardly people. Many times we look the other way or say or do nothing as others around us engage in actions or practices harmful, or not beneficial to, the common good. We allow our elected officials to legislate, and our business community to forge ahead unchallenged against our best interests, and many times we simply take it, without so much as a whimper. Have you ever stopped to consider the cost of such complacency? Or thought about what would have happened had other courageous and visionary -people before us had been as complacent as we are today? Have you ever thought, for example...

What if Rosa Parks had meekly submitted to that irate Alabama bus driver's demand that she move to the rear of the bus to make room for white passengers up front? You know the answer: blacks and all other persons of color would still ne regarded and treated as second-class citizens, and would never be afforded the simple dignity every human being is entitled to.

What if Thomas Jefferson and our other Founding Fathers had complacently stayed on their plantations or in their shops and businesses instead of meeting to plan for independence by crafting its unprecedented declaration? The action they took was at great personal risk and could have cost them their lives. The United States would still be a colony, and the most democratic form of government ever devised, with its emphasis on individual freedoms, would never have come into being.

What if President Lyndon B. Johnson had not pushed for civil rights legislation or for expanded social programs like the War on Poverty or Medicare? He knew as he pressed for these things that doing so would cost his Democratic Party votes for years to come, especially in the South. To his credit, though, he rejected political expediency and fought for and got these passed anyway. The result? Institutionalized racism was overturned; millions of poor were lifted out of poverty; and millions of elderly were able to lead less worrisome and more comfortable lives.

What if Ralph Nader had simply graduated law school, kept quiet, and opted to become another play-it-safe corporate lawyer? From 1959, when he published "The Safe Car You Can't Get" in The Nation, through his well-known 1965 study called "Unsafe At Any Speed," to numerous other industry and environmental exposes over the decades, this man acted as a whistle-blower on negligent American industry for our safety and benefit. Alkong the way, he has become stigmatized by corporate America as a kook and opportunist, when in actuality, he has spotlighted negligent businesses and polluters and caused them to produce safer and cleaner products. Though I still blame him for George W. Bush becoming President, I nonetheless admire his guts and conscientiousness in looking out for consumers.

What if Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had merely golfed their termns away instead of developing NASA and channeling our science and industry toward space exploration and a manned moon landing ahead of the Russians? Both gambled with possible failure and risked political criticism for making huge expenditures on untried projects without any guarantee of success. But the positive end results of their actions benefitted us in numerous ways: we eventually won the Cold War, there was rapid growth of computer technology, vast improvements in electronics and communications technologies, new discoveries in medicine and even agriculture were all spawned due to their efforts.

What if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had let polio defeat him? Or had become the benign, unadventurous President many in his upper class background had preferred he become? The answer to this is way too easy: there would be no time-and-a-half overtime pay, no unemployment compensation, no labor unions, perhaps no middle class (or a far more microscopic one), no Social Security for retirement, no protection for your bank (and therefore none for your deposits), and no regulation of the stock market.
The many good benefits FDR pushed for and attained for this nation are so vast and important to our quality of life that living without them would be incomprehensible!

What if the 1860 Republican Party and President Abraham Lincoln had just played it politically safe and had struck another in a series of meaningless compromises on slavery with southern politicians just as his predecessors had done? Yes, his life would have undoubtedly been spared, and yes, there would have been no Civil War, but slavery would still exist and the universal freedom and dignity of persons of color would never have been achieved in this country. The courage and justice practiced by Lincoln and his party helped make this nation truly legally become a "land of the free".

What if President Theodore Roosevelt had taken the easy way out and let the huge trusts and corporate bankers of his day have their way completely unchallenged as they had for many years? Simple: the concept of government taking a regulatory role over big business to protect small business and average people from the excesses of concentrated capital would never have come into being. Roosevelt instituted the federal government as a protective buffer between big business and everyone else. He also helped establish regulation over food and drug products to ensure public safety. Our National Parks and provisions against pollution were direct results of Roosevelt's influence, and the beneficial results of his activism remain to this day.
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In contrast to many of today's visionless, play-it-safe conservative Republicans and Blue Dog conservative Democrats, the persons featured above were not lazy defenders of the status quo. They refused to accept unjust or backward-looking conditions as they were and strode to change them by taking individual action. They did so at great risk politically, physically, and economically. They acted toward fulfilling a more just and improved society for all. The same cannot, and will not, ever be said of mediocre, corrupted, and self-centered politicians like Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell, or Ben Nelson, or of egomanaical demagogues like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.

We see the positive results of the actions of those pioneers pictured above all around us, every day. We know the "what if" of had they never acted. Ours would be a far bleaker and uncomfortable world had they not shown the courage to move as they did. This should serve as inspiration and impetus for all of us to leave our comfort zones once every so often to make a courageous stand for the benefit of others on occasion!

LEADERSHIP WE COULD USE TODAY!

"TAX THE VERY WEALTHY TO MAKE EVERYONE HEALTHY!"
- VIGILANTE, SOZADEE, CA -


It was a kinder, gentler, and, in many ways, a much nobler time. People were far more civil back then, as they had shared a unique and almost universal commonality. His country had just left a terrible economic catastrophe which had seen millions go hungry and without work. It had also been involved in a horrifically bloody and costly war. Many returned soldiers were still without jobs and there was a housing shortage as well. A new enemy was devouring territory overseas and had declared its determination to conquer the world. Though it seemed that the absolute worst of the preceding few years had passed, much had been lost and many were gripped with an uneasy and gnawing fear. The future seemed uncertain at best. In such a foreboding atmosphere, he decided to run for high political office in an effort to bring hope to millions and improve their lot in life.



He was a member of "the greatest generation", and like most others of that time, he had come from very humble roots. Son of a small town pharmacist, he was raised in a small midwestern village of only 700 people. From this simple and austere setting, he dreamed of some day becoming a college professor. The dream was seemingly dashed, however, once the Great Depression hit. He had to leave the university in his first year of study to work in and help save the small family drug store. To do so, it became clear that he, like his father, must also become a pharmacist, and so he buckled down to learn the trade. This extremely bright and dedicated young man amazingly completed a two-year course of study in only six months' time and received his Pharmacist's License from the Capitol College of Pharmacy in Denver, CO. Over the next 7 years, he worked tirelessly in the family store until it had once again become prosperous, this in the middle of the worst economic downturn in the nation's history.

By 1937, his hard work had made it possible for him to return to college. Two years later he had earned a B.A. from the University of Minnesota. The very next year, he attended Louisiana State University (where a classmate of his was future Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long). Here he obtained his Master's Degree in Political Science. Ever gregarious, friendly, and energetic, he along the way became a brother of the Phi Delta Chi (Theta Division) fraternity, and also an honorary brother of Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity. This was a rather remarkable occurrence for a white man of his era. But then war broke out, and the direction of his life took another turn.

Like most men of that time, he felt compelled to help his country fight to victory. After two failed attempts at enlistment (he was rejected due to a hernia), he worked in several different wartime agencies over the next few years to aid the cause. He began to notice the positive effect government agencies could play in people's lives, and so became interested in government and politics as a practical career. He ran for mayor of Minneapolis but was defeated due to an inadequately funded campaign. Undaunted, he remained active in politics, and played a pivotal role in merging Minnesota's laborers and farmers with the state's Democratic Party. The resultant DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) Party he helped forge back then became, and remains to this day, Minnesota's dominant political party. On his second try, he was successful in his bid to become mayor of Minneapolis, and was reelected by a record margin two years after that. He had enacted many local beneficial reforms and had been successful in removing undesirable criminals from the city.

And so it was in 1948 that he decided to make a bid for even higher office. He figured that, if he achieved the office of U.S. Senator, he would be able to work for the betterment of millions all across the country rather than just several hundred thousand on a local level. That year he became the first Democratic Senator from Minnesota in 47 years, and the first Democrat actually elected to the Senate from that state since 1858!It was an amazing accomplishment. He didn't fully realize it then, but he had engineered a huge political shift for his state. But the best was yet to come.

Even prior to his senatorial election, he undertook a principled, courageous, and controversial fight to end racial discrimination. At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, he took to the microphone and boldly proclaimed, "To those who say, we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years too late...the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!"

Once elected, he spent the next 15 years steadfastly working for civil rights, the cause of labor, and government aid for the less fortunate. He once admonished, "Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism." He advocated the idea of the Peace Corps, which President John F. Kennedy adopted and established in 1961. He was passionate and articulate and loved to deliver a forceful speech. Comic Johhny Carson once jokingly referred to him as "Minnesota Chats", a pun on the nickname of "Minnesota Fats" which had been given to a popular billiards player of the day. His joyous and smiling approach to politics earned him the praise and admiration of his colleagues, even political foes. While known for his dramatic and fiery public oratory, he was also very adept at soft-spoken, behind-the-scenes listening, negotiating, and compromising. Conservative Republican Barry Goldwater once said of him, "listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages." For, while forceful and excitable, he was also very thorough, as well as respectful and quick-witted. On another occasion, Goldwater recalled, "After one of his long-winded speeches I suggested he had been vaccinated with a phonograph needle. He responded by saying that I would have been a great success in the movies working for Eighteenth Century Fox."

He went on to become his nation's 38th Vice President, serving under President Lyndon B. Johnson. As Vice President, Hubert H. Humphrey continued with his expertise in listening, negotiating, and compromising. He worked with his old Senate colleagues and was instrumental in getting civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, Fair Housing, and other progressive LBJ legislation through Congress, back in that golden era when Congress actually delivered a great deal of benefit for average working people, farmers, and the poor, not just big business.

Humphrey was narrowly defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968 when he ran for the presidency. He went back home to Minnesota to teach political science at Macalaster College. Voters returned him to the U.S. Senate two years later, and he remained there the rest of his life. I consider myself lucky to have actually met him and shaken his hand briefly in 1975. He had a big, powerful hand with surprisingly tender palms. I remember thinking at the time how that hand had probably shaken 1 million others prior to having shaken mine, for he had met people all across the country and throughout the world in his long career. The very next year, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing him deliver a stump speech in southern Minnesota on behalf of then-presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. I had driven down to see and hear both men speak in an open field and see how they would fare before a crowd in this normally fairly conservative Republican area of the state. Humphrey launched into a fiery "give-'em-hell-Hubert" type of tirade about how Earl Butz, Gerald Ford, and the Republicans had ruined the rural and agricultural economy, and how Jimmy Carter would set things right. At the end of his speech, Humphrey had a good number of those Republicans loudly cheering that day. It was a sight to behold! (Of course, that was back in the days when Republicans actually listened to, and compromised with, their opponents, and didn't try to disrupt political gatherings, or, like spoiled, unruly little children, shout out those not sharing their view. Our country AND the Republican Party were in far saner, more civil, and much better shape in that way back at that time)!

When Humphrey died in 1978, his funeral was attended by hundreds of world and American political leaders, friend and foe alike. All came to pay their last, heartfelt, genuine respects to the man who had been dubbed "the happy warrior" and who had celebrated and fought for the causes of equal rights, fairness, and opportunity for the entire human race.



I have no doubt that Hubert H. Humphrey would be delighted to see we have elected Barack Obama as our first President of African-American heritage. He would likewise be delighted that we now have Sonia Sotomayor as our first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. And I am certain that he would be an avidly vocal supporter of a universal, public option (if not an outright single-payer) national health care bill, just as he had strongly supported Medicare in 1965. There is absolutely no way this great fighter for justice would have allowed today's greedy and exclusive health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to fleece the public as they have been doing steadily for the past two decades. He would have lambasted and shamed them publicly, and thrashed them for their excesses. His would be a leadership we could use today. He would do as he always did: strongly voice his support for public health care reform publicly, let tthe piggish-monied interests know he meant business, and then privately listen to and negotiate with the opposition to get a meaningful and beneficial bill passed. His approach would not be like that of Mitch McConnell, or John Kyl, or Jim DeMint, or Eric Cantor, or John Boehner, whereby all one says is "no" and tries to gin up angry protestors across the country for the benefit of lobbyists and big insurance companies. For Humphrey worked on behalf of, and truly understood, average working people and those who need special help, not big business and corrupt corporate lobbyists. He never forgot the hard-pressed people who were all around him as he came of age, the difficulties his own family had faced, or how government could be a good and effective means to help better everyone's lives. He would stand today with the positive-oriented and visionary Dennis Kuciniches, Bernie Sanderses, Anthony Weiners, and Sherrod Browns in government, not with the previously mentioned naysayers. Hubert H. Humphrey would now rise and state, with firm conviction, that "those who say we are rushing this issue of universal national health care, I say to you we are 233 years too late, and the time has come for Government to get out of the dark shadows of exclusion and obsession with excessive private profit and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of providing for universal human needs!"

AND HE WOULD BE THOROUGHLY CORRECT.






UP NEXT: JESUS AND UNIVERSAL NATIONAL HEALTH CARE REFORM

ANOTHER GREAT HEALTH CARE IDEA!

"With virtually no Republicans agreeing with their own constituents that a public option is the way to go, you can take any state in the Union (especially in the Old Confederacy) and find a disconnect between members of Congress following a lock-step anti-family ideology and average families wanting the reasonable health insurance like the rest of the industrialized world already has---and for far, far less money than the U.S. spends on health care."
- Howie Klein, in his june 26 post "Why Are So Many Members Of Congress Going Against Their Own Constituents' Demands For Health Care Reform?" on his superb blog "Down With Tyranny!" (http://www.downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/) -


Here is another tremendously intriguing idea on reforming health care which appeared in the Sunday edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 28, 2009. Yes, we in Minnesota DO have brains and aren't all wacko eccentrics like Michele Bachmann and Jesse Ventura! FYI: "DFL" stands for Democratic-Farmer-Laborer, the Minnesota version of the Democratic Party.


The White House wants help, and state Rep. Tom Huntley gets the call. Here's why:

By LORI STURDEVANT, Star Tribune

Last update: June 27, 2009 - 11:57 PM

You don't get a telephone call inviting you to the White House every day -- or ever -- even if you're a nine-term DFL state representative from Duluth.

Rep. Tom Huntley picked up the phone and heard "This is the White House calling" on June 13. He had to catch his breath before he could utter, "I'll be there."

Four days later, Huntley sat at 1600 Pennsylvania Av. with 21 other state legislators from around the country and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, discussing the hottest national policy topic of the season, health care reform.

It may say something noteworthy about the Obama administration's policy focus that among all of Minnesota health-minded legislators, Huntley got the call.

It isn't surprising that the president would seek out someone with Huntley's expertise. The 71-year-old Ph.D. biochemist taught at medical schools for 40 years, most of them at the University of Minnesota-Duluth School of Medicine. At the Legislature, he has chaired the House's health care finance division since DFLers took control of the chamber in 2007.

What's interesting is that the White House tapped someone with Huntley's take on how to proceed with reform. More than any other DFLer in St. Paul, Huntley has been a champion of changing the way medicine is practiced and paid for, in order to control costs.

Huntley's stock line is, "You've got to fix the system for the 93 percent in order to have money to serve the 7 percent" -- that is, the share of the Minnesota population that lacks health insurance. For the nation, that share is closer to 16 percent.

He says that Minnesota's doctors, some of whom he trained, treat insured people in ways that are too often duplicative and ineffective. For that, he does not blame them. Rather, he faults a fee-for-service payment system that rewards doctors for the number of procedures they do, not for keeping patients healthy.

Only if the galloping growth in health care spending can be slowed can the state or the nation afford to insure the uninsured. "You have to get after the costs," he says.

Other DFL legislators who carry a health care portfolio -- Sens. Linda Berglin and John Marty, to name two -- have made themselves almost synonymous with expanding access to health insurance via government efforts. Their difference with Huntley is more one of emphasis than of substance. They too favor lower-cost, prevention-focused medical practices, and Huntley is not averse to a government-sponsored health insurance program.

But if you're President Obama, and you see the access expansion train beginning to move in Congress without cost-containment cars firmly attached, the Minnesotan whose advice you want is Tom Huntley.

And if you're Huntley, itching to change the way Minnesota doctors treat the big-ticket diseases -- diabetes, depression, asthma, heart and coronary artery disease -- you want the White House to bring a Medicare and Medicaid payment-reform pilot project to this state. That's what he pitched in D.C.

He explained: "If you have a clinic and 5 percent of your patients are in a special payment program, you're not going to change the way you deliver medicine. But if 60 percent of your patients are paid in a certain way, that will change your behavior. I want to be able to combine Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance to get that critical mass for change."

Huntley's 2008 bill started down that road. When fully implemented later this year, it will pay primary care doctors to coordinate the care of their patients with chronic conditions. That idea -- "medical homes," in Capitol shorthand -- is intended to minimize high-cost, duplicative treatment by medical specialists.

But without the big federal programs involved, there's only so far that Huntley's 2008 bill can go in saving money. "We're asking that Minnesota be allowed to change the way Medicare pays," he said.

If Huntley gets his pilot, Minnesota could find itself positioned as a make-or-break proving ground for President Obama's biggest domestic initiative. The pressure will be on a lot of Minnesotans - not least of them Huntley - to show that it's possible to rein in health care costs while still insuring more people.

Huntley acknowledges that changing the way medicine is practiced is "very difficult." But, he says, "it's what we have to do.

"If this doesn't work, then you really will have a system where government sets the cost of everything...I don't think that's good for anybody. That wouldn't do anything for quality improvement. That's the club that's hanging out there."


Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.

Treat the disease: Change how health care is paid for. A novel idea indeed!