Letters to the Editor
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Sick!
And there is a trillion dollars (that is a thousand billion, right?) for the never ending war?
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Take action?
What action is that? Telling me I should be grateful to pay for someone else no matter what? Where's the incentive for me? I mean other than hoping angry liberals like me? Since when did not being abjectly poor qualify me to support everyone else?
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SCHIP veto
The nearest rally is over 70 miles away.
I just pulled up my congressional delegations votes on this matter. All three voted for it. I just emailed all three with a request to continue the support.
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@ (~~~~)
Don't worry. No one expects you to extend your compassion beyond its very limited capacity. Trust me. We have your number.
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I swear...
I think it's a loot-the-treasury-ASAP/quick-quick-before-they-notice
With LOTS of 'war' spending enriching the bothers and sisters in the cabal.
So they'll be stashed for whenever that thing called 'Republican'
ever crawls out again from under the rock.
[i had an image of a muddy elephant slimed all over with dollar bills
squeezing -grimaced -out from under a big rock]
The sick kids can in the meantime, of course, simply continue to...eat cake.
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This veto just illustrates another example
of how Bush lied to us from the beginning. He said he was a "compassionate conservative." We now know that there is no such thing. He said he wasn't into "nation building," yet he invaded Iraq with an idea that he would be doing just that. He carps endlessly on "freedom," while he does everything that he can to undermine our constitution, the very document that provides a philosophical underpinning for our freedoms and the protection thereof.
This man is a liar of monsterous proportions. This man is dangerous. This man is destroying our nation.
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Harsh!
"This man is a liar of monsterous proportions. This man is dangerous. This man is destroying our nation.
-- AKA Smith "
I love the terminology.
We need to use the words more often.
Less polity, less comity...the thugs never register anything
Less than invective.
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Funding?
Isn't this bill funded with a huge increase in the tobacco tax?
I would be a lot more sympathetic with all the liberal self-righteous posturing going on here if I though that all Americans, including upper middle class progressive types, were supposed to pay for this program.
Its a nice program and seems as reasonable as any other, so I really don't have reason to object, except that the funding mechanism is very regressive and wholly lacking any nexus to the problem to be solved.
The bill, as written, is pretty gutless and the veto could actually be justified on those grounds alone.
By no means am I suggesting that that was the President's reason or that he is a good guy.
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AKA Smith
Pay my share then. My premium today is about $530/month. And at that I figure coverage is no more than 40 cents on the dollar. Feel free to kick in for my part, because I'm not. Oh tut tut you can cluck about it but there it is. Unless you have a printing press in your basement, there isn't any more free money to come from me. If you want someone to pay why don't you go to AARP since the federal government today spends 10x more percapita on senior citizens than it does on children.
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Misunderstanding about SCHIP
(~~~~), like a few others, fails to understand what the SCHIP program is. It has nothing to do with the "abjectly poor." The "abjectly poor" are already covered under Medicaid, no matter what. SCHIP funding does not affect them.
What SCHIP does is provide health insurance, through state-administered Medicaid programs, to children of parents who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but fall below a certain income cap. These are people who are working but cannot afford -- or for some reason, cannot buy at any price -- private health insurance coverage. This is a very large group, including not just the so-called "working poor" but many people who work for small companies that do not provide employee insurance, or people who are self-employed or independent contractors or people who live in states with very limited health insurance markets (and there are many such states, including mine).
These SCHIP programs are very cost-effective and do much to limit overall medical costs borne by society. There are several proposals in different states to raise income caps or even lift them entirely, allowing families to pay for their own insurance coverage under SCHIP, precisely because private health insurance availability is spotty.
You will find, if you research the issue, that SCHIP programs, including the just-vetoed SCHIP bill, have very wide support across the political spectrum. My own penny-pinching Republican governor is a huge supporter, and was very disappointed with the president's position. In our largely rural state, trying to get self-insured is either outrageously expensive or flat-out impossible. Most of the major health insurance companies simply do not do business in my state because it's too small a market for them.
Of course, (~~~~) is not alone in his failure to understand SCHIP. Bush, too, is pretty dense on the matter. His argument is that funding SCHIP takes business away from the private insurers, the sainted private sector. But people wouldn't need SCHIP in the first place if they had a reasonable chance of getting private insurance!
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Well has_te,
I probably just landed on some list somewhere. You know sometimes I just cannot bear to read. I just came away from the thread about the guy who is suing the gov over the Patriot Act. I couldn't finish it because tears came to my eyes. I truly feel that we are losing our nation due to the encroachments of people whose main motive is profits.
George W. is the product of a father whose response when asked a question about the little guy was to look at his watch and a mother who believes victims of Katrina are now better off because some of them got on the dole. People like this, rich bastards who think that everyone else should be sacrificing for THEIR capitalistic endeavors, are simply screwing the rest of us.
Too bad so many working and middle class people are too stupid or too inattentive to see this.