We left at 10:00 this morning for Newark Airport where we picked up Ceil for her two-week Easter visit. The three of us drove from there to look at the house which Mark & Kate have put a bid on. It is a nice house which they should know if they got within the next week.

I have avoided making any comments about the national health care debate, mostly for fear of antagonizing some readers. But I guess I need to make some statement about it. I am totally in favor of national health care, and I am willing to pay slightly increased taxes to provide care for people whose jobs do not provide it. There are a few major reasons why rational people form governments:

• protect individual rights, such as freedom of religion, expression and movement;
• provide services which people cannot necessarily provide themselves, such as education, healthcare, housing and food;
• protect people from each other and from outsiders.

Everything else that governments do is secondary to those primary responsibilities. It says a lot about humans as a species though that many governments are mostly concerned with their own self-preservation, more concerned with protecting themselves from the populace than serving the populace itself.

And it says a lot about Americans how many are so concerned with protecting every last dollar of their own taxes that they are willing to screw other people in the process. This can be seen both in New Jersey's economic crisis and in the national health care situation. I am very pessimistic about the future of this country.