As a footnote to your last post: Our community got an amendment passed in the State Assembly a couple of years ago because of an interpretation to a state law that asserted community volunteers could not complete work on City projects that otherwise could be done with unionized labour.

Under that interpretation, a local Rotary Club could not fundraise and build, say, a park playground because the playground installation could be done by union workers. Community clean-up projects -- where you get a 100 volunteers to clean-up a creek bed -- would be forbidden because you could have union workers do that work. Adopt-a-Park programs would be out of bounds, because union members could pick up the trash rather than the adoptee. It's not that these jobs were being eliminated; there was no funding to complete these tasks in the first place, and they likely wouldn't happen without volunteers.

It was an insane interpretation that would have eliminated a host of community service projects that benefit society and could have added exponentially to the cost of government.

Thankfully, we got the original sponsor of the legislation to introduce an amendment clarifying that he did not intend the kiss of death to volunteerism.

That's just one small sliver of the challenges we face in California.

Statistically, you spend 90 percent of all your lifetime health care costs in the final 10 days of your life. So, if people were willing to die 10 days sooner we could save a bundle!

Also, it would be much better on the pocketbook if people would just quickly expire at the scene of an traumatic accident rather than linger on, enlist the time and energy of a couple of EMTs, get airlifted to an emergency room and then die on the table. Not a lot of return on investment in that case...

Give me a bit more time and I'm sure I can come up with a few more good ideas!