Uncle Ken's bio

 The individual mandate originated in the Heritage Foundation, and was part of Romneycare, back when he seemed to be a decent person, which he stopped being when he ran for prez, but now he seems to be becoming again.  He wears a coat of many colors.

If people were so poor that they can't afford insurance then they could get medicaid or their insurance would be so heavily subsidized that they could afford it.  The people it mainly went after were those people who could well afford it. but were skating because they gambled that nothing would happen to them.

I wonder about Beagles getting that 20 percent discount on his hospital bill because he had no insurance.  As we all know insurance companies make deals with hospitals so that they actually pay quite a bit less than that number on your bill.  So if the insurance company pays less than full price and the uninsured pay 20 percent less, who pays full price?

I was kind of hoping that we would be writing short bios because now we have a new guy.  I'll start with my own, though I tend to be pretty loquacious (anybody who uses the word loquacious, you have to know that they are loquacious) so this may go on a little longer than it should, but you know i love the sound of my own voice.

I was born in Chicago in 1945, the son of a Hoosier son of a chicken farmer and a city slicker Bohunk from Berwyn.  Had a normal and pretty pleasant childhood.  When I went to high school I had many classes with Beagles though i don't think we ever hung out together after school. 

Went to college at the University of Illinois where I just squeaked by because I was a big beer drinking goofball.  Dodged the draft for awhile and ended up getting a CO which I served in southern Illinois.  Bartended and drank a lot of beer for a long while, thinking somehow I would become a writer. 

When it became apparent that that was not going to happen I went to the local junior college and got a data processing certificate.  When that didn't get me a job I sought my fortune in Austin Texas.  Got a pretty good job, but I thought I could do better so I quit and then discovered that not only could I not do better, but that I could not get any other job at all, and returned dead broke to live in the attic of my parents' house in Chicago.

Got a pretty good job being the computer guy at a tiny state agency, where after ten years I once again thought I could do better, and it turned out that I couldn't.  I had a variety of short jobs that didn't work out and temp jobs, and for the last seven years until I retired I was a substitute teacher.

Somewhere along the line maybe ten years ago I got to thinking about Beagles.  Back in 1963 it was a big deal to go to college, not that many people did and if you got the chance you should certainly take it.  When Beagles, who did well in school, declared he was not going to college it shocked the school.  I didn't agree with what he did, but I rather admired him for going against the grain.

His sister had been a waitress when I was tending bar at the Chinese restaurant in Champaign and when I reconnected with her back when everybody was reconnecting on facebook I asked about her brother and she gave me his email and his facebook page, and we started corresponding.  I am a bleeding heart liberal, but other bleeding heart liberals bore me because they already believe what i believe so I like to talk to conservatives (not at the level of calling each other names, but more analytical, like why do you believe what you believe), and we began exchanging emails on politics. and sometimes other subjects crept in.  In order to preserve our deathless prose Beagles went to blogspot and got the blog and it has been running ever since. 

My hobby is watercolors and one day in class one of the women said that i ought to show my paintings at the Ten Cat.  Ten who?  But it turned out it was a north side bar and when I called them timorously asking if I could put my paintings in their windows they said sure.  When I asked them if they didn't want to see them first they said Naw, so that's the kind of quality control that they had.

I had longed for a Friday night bar since I had left Champaign and the Ten Cat became that.  I became pretty good friends with Old Dog and when I told him about the blog he was interested and he became the third Fellow of The Institute.

That's my story I encourage other Fellows to do the same, though if you want to keep it shorter than I have, well that would be fine.