Mandates are what government does. The government insists that things be done according to rules that are debated and then mutually agreed upon.

Would you really want market forces to decide whether or not the meat you buy in the supermarket was safe? Get rid of government interference and mandates on clean drinking water?

If you are totally against mandates then to fly without a parachute on a lot of things that have kept you and your family safe and healthy.

There are just a few things that I’d like to point out.

It’s been tough to keep track of all the various proposed parts of the House and Senate health care proposals, but I can tell you this - they were crafted by hundreds of members of Congress. Laying it all at Harry Reid’s door - like he wrote it - is ludicrous. The final bill will be a hybrid of what the House came up with (not a public option, but not terrible) and the Senate bill (not as good as the House bill ) and what the White House has proposed.

Maybe Sue Lowden isn’t able to keep up with it any better than some of the rest of us out here in the sagebrush.

To keep it simple, you don’t have to look any further than the White House website for the Clif Notes version, as follows:

(See press release below)

I love Reid’s tough new tone, but unfortunately, it needs to come with a sharp stick with which to poke Ben Nelson (D-Neb), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo), Jim Webb (D-Va) and Mark Warner (D-Va). Actually, Reid should do more than poke them, he should draw blood.

Leave a mark.

Like Pakistan.

Like China.

Like education.

He essentially said what Robert Reich says in this column, that we can’t afford not to bail out our schools. My co-worker thinks that we’re crazy to keep cutting education spending, saying that no other sensible country would do that, and he can’t understand why we are.

I told him: America elected George W. Bush, therefore it’s clear that they don’t value education. Governor Jim Gibbons,( R-NV )  is proof of that on the state level. He’s got his.

Read what Reich has to say:

Bail Out Our Schools

Things got off to a badish start last night. I’d taken a month long ‘rest’ from my chemo-suppressant, Arimidex. It was time buck-up and start taking it again. The side effects make you wonder if the cure isn’t worse than the disease. But since the disease, breast cancer, is probably worse - a Stage IV recurrence isn’t curable at all - that I have to find a way to manage the freakin’ side effects. But, I understand why so many women opt to go off of it and take their chances.

Sigh. Vanity, thy name is woman. I want hair. Hair that actually grows. Hair that isn’t thinning and falling out. Of course, leaving the extreme heartburn, joint pain and water retention behind would be cool, too.

This brought to mind the conversations Mr. Maven and I have been having about the cost of our prescriptions now.

It’s grim

Senators Reid and Ensign have announced that $5 million of funding would be coming to the Reno-Tahoe International Airport for needed upgrades to the airports ramp. The idea is to keep this airport viable for tourist and business traffic well into the future. All said, this means some 200 well paying construction type jobs, in addition to supplies and materials purchased from local business.

Furthermore, for those who hate everything about the federal government: Here’s a news flash - that money comes from the Department of Transportation. Another one of those nasty federal agencies.

Let’s just say that the likes of Sue Lowdan is right when she claims that private enterprise can handle it all.

The air traffic controllers at JFK do an awesome job in one of the most difficult aviation control environments in the world. My husband, Capt. Maven, has flown into and out of JFK many times over his professional aviation career and he wasn’t perturbed by this ‘childish’ incident.

Capt. Maven has said more than once that pilots going in and out of JFK had better pull their heads out of the dark place, because these JFK controllers are just that sharp and on top of it. You don’t want to be on the back side of their power curve.

That said:

In an interview with CNBC, Buffett said the current bill does not focus on controlling costs, which he sees as the central problem that must be addressed to reform the system. He added that while he does not like the Senate bill, he’d vote for it in preference to doing nothing.

“What we have now is untenable over time,” said Buffett, an early supporter of Obama’s candidacy. “That kind of a cost compared to the rest of the world is really like a tapeworm eating, you know, at our economic body.”

“We have a health system that, in terms of costs, is really out of control,” he added. “And if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So we need something else.”