Letters to the Editor
Juliebird
Published Letters: 2091 Editor's Choice: 107
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calculation is not a crime
[Read the article: Clinton laughs off laugh attack]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Please.
How many of our kids "just happened" to want to take 1 foreign language, 3 AP classes, play 2 sports a year, learn 1 instrument and volunteer for 1 community project? Many of these activities are done years 9decades?) in advance of the desired goal: a place in a good college of their choice.
How many of us "just happen" to take on committee work, or other grunt projects at work, without an eye towards future promotions, raises, or jobs?
How many of us decide to show an interest in an activity because our sweetheart (or potential sweetheart) in involved?
Politics is no different. I knew people who were prepping for their far-future political campaigns by the 6th grade. (And woe betide those who did not "calculate": photos or stories about "youthful indescretions" have ended many a political career before it even started).
So much of our activity, our social interaction, and our speech is "calculated." Heck, playwright David Mamet says humans only speak to get something they want.
In this day and age, with 24-hour news channels, you tube, and cellphone cameras, political candidates are never given an opportunity to be "just themselves." Any time a candidate is spontaneous, someone is there to critique it, parse it, and explain what is wrong or damaging about what they said or did.
Do not think for a moment Dubya is or was any less "calculating." That easy-going good ol' boy act is ... an act carefully crafted over the decades at elite East Coast intstitutions.
So, yeah, I'd love it if Hillary Clinton were more spontaneous. I'd also love it if my cat could roar. But I keep my expectations realistic.
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some myths
[Read the article: Sick children left behind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Isn't this bill funded with a huge increase in the tobacco tax?"
Yes. That was a compromise reached with Republican house members, who insisted it be funded with tobacco taxes. I'm sure it was partly in hope that the bill would then die quietly. Funding it wit tobacco taxes is short-sighted (lots of smokers needed to make $0.50 per pack become $35 trillion). But ... it's hardly a "liberal" idea.
"It's too expensive."
Oh, please. Every kid that goes to the ER with an ear infection costs at least double what an office visit costs. And those that can't pay for the ER ear infction visit, have their visit paid for by .... the tax payers.
And outbreaks of disease, from rotovirus to measles to meningitis cost us tax payers huge sums. Think of the old adage in this way: a *penny* of prevention or a *dollar* of cure.
Lastly, kids, even very sick kids, cost us tax payers less per kid than the elderly. We subsidie health care for the elderly; it makes sense to subsidize health care for kids. Kids, as a population, require less intervention than the elderly, whether it be surgery, medication, emergency care or therapies.
So (~~~~), by expanding the SCHIP program, the government will be taking less of your money.
"It's my money."
Grow up. We don't get to choose where our tax oney goes, except in very broad terms (we can elect or remove officials who promise to spend our money in ways we approve). But the constitution does not guarentee "no taxation without your own personal line-item approval."
The SCHIP is hardly pork. It's actually a program designed to help a large prcentage of the citizenry (the kids themselves, and their parents, people who pay for insurance and have the costs of the uninsured rolled into their premiums, people ho work in the health care sector who have to spend time and effort trying to treat and fund people who can't pay, anyone who has an emergency and goes to the ER, and anyone who might be exposed to a sick contagious kid who hasn't been treated because of no health insurance), which will result in a healthier, and therfore more productive and profitable, workforce.
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@ quiet type
[Read the article: The Decider has decided]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Albee is too witty.
Maybe Harold Pinter (if he developed a meth habit).
Or Beckett, in one of his more experimental modes. The long pauses between each phrase would work especially well, I think.
But really, it's more Dadaist, no?
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@neilpaul
[Read the article: Sick children left behind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"We are taking costs away from healthcare users who subsidize free care for the uninsured and putting those same costs onto smokers, who seem to be society's bankroll of last resort. We are taking a wide base of funding (the presently insured) and moving to a narrow base of funding. That is crap."
Well, in the case of the federal SCHIP expansion program, your beef is not with "you liberal types." Tis with the Republicans in congress who insisted it be funded that way.
And while I understand that smokers represent a smaller subset of tax payers than all of America, I don't see how "that is crap."
Who forces people to smoke? Who forces people to continue to buy cigarettes? No one "needs" cigarettes in the same way people "need" heat in the winter and gas in their cars (or reasonable public trnsport fees) to get places. Cigarette smokers are very expensive to fund, health care-wise. Not just in the large number of smokers who develop cancers, emphysema and other long-term, high-cost diseases, but in every-day illnesses like bronchitis and persistent coughs, which take smokers out of work more often than their non-smoking colleagues.
Think cigarette taxes are outrageous? Quit. It's amazing how much money you'll save yourself, and me. If there aren't enough smokers to pay for SCHIP, then we'll find another way to fund it.