Blogcritics Comments on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Comment by gonzo marx on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:30:50 EDT

Charles sez - "Funding for the war will end shortly, wether it be 1 year of 5 years or 10 years, it will not be a cost passed on to our children." no offense intended, but bullshit! Iraq is off budget, and deficit spending..it's already on the nation's credit card for well over half a trillion dollars...our kids and grandkids are already the ones paying for it at least they could be healthy enough to work in order to pay for it all as for the 1, 5, or 10 year bit...you do know that the mercenary contractors have NO defined endpoint in their agreements? those folks are there, on our nickel, for eternity, according to their contracts...and check those prices!! gotta take it all into consideration, and ya can't palm that ace when folks are watching... Excelsior?

Comment by Charles Signorile on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:25:58 EDT

what Democrats fail to realize in regards to the SCHIP debate is that Bush was not saying we cannot afford $35 billion over 5 years. Funding for the war will end shortly, wether it be 1 year of 5 years or 10 years, it will not be a cost passed on to our children. An expanded entitlement program however will only continue to grow, and as we have seen with the failed social security system, once the government starts a program to "take care of people" it is impossible to dissolve.

Comment by gonzo marx on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:09:02 EDT

bah....all the so-called Democratic "strategists" should be forced to drink bleach for their own incompetence S-CHIP is a perfect example all you need to do to fuck with the WH and make the majority of Americans go "yaaaay!" is to place ALL the War funding, as well as S-CHIP into the overall budget this stops the WH from bullshit Enron style accounting when they try and claim they are being fiscally responsible... AND if W slaps a veto on it, the Dems can then ask, VERY publicly , WHY he doesn't support the troops and why he hates America's children so much he doesn't want them to get health care so fucking simple, yet they remain so fucking clueless so...any of you Elected Representatives want a strategist who can show you how to actually WIN a political battle...yer gonzo suggest not only Machiavelli, but the Art of War as well nuff said... Excelsior?

Comment by bliffle on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:54:10 EDT

With budget fatigue set fully in place Bush has demanded of congress another $44billion in Vanity War funding, thus dwarfing, again, the few pennies that might have been spent on childrens health. Clearly, the SCHIPs furor was instigated to dull your senses to the upcoming finanncial onslaught by Bush. Nalle, Clavos, etc., beat the drums and sounded the horns about the sheer madness of spending money on mere children. After all, that money could be better employed paying off his backers and supporters. Sleep on, o sheep of America.

Comment by bliffle on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:13:46 EDT

Now that SCHIP has served it's purpose as a red herring to distract attention from Iraq Invasion funding all those neocons who feigned interest in controlling deficits and/or healthcare for children have dropped out of the conversation. Thus proving my assertion that it was a distraction all along.

Comment by Jerry on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:43:04 EDT

Bliffle - What if Dave, who's known to own firearms, has a concealed weapon in that dark alley, and blows Mr. Blow away, isn't that also how "the system works"?

Comment by REMF on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:21:19 EDT

"It's a lovely paranoid fantasy, Bliffle, but it bears no resemblance to the real world." Always nice to be called "paranoid" and lectured on the "real world" by a guy who lives in a fortified compound, ehe bliff?

Comment by bliffle on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:00:46 EDT

Dave sez: "...No one sent me a memo,.." I know, I know, it's a knee-jerk reaction by now. You're so good you can anticipate the next command without having to actually hear Your Masters Voice. In ElectroMagnetic wave propagation theory one learns that a Group signal can travel faster than the speed of light (seemingly in contradiction to Einstein, seemingly). This must be the way Nalle detects these wishes of the Masters And Gurus in DC.

Comment by Cindy D on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 20:41:39 EDT

The majority of Americans want the SCHIP increase. Washington Post/ABC News Poll Oct. 2

Comment by handyguy on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 17:28:41 EDT

It's not just Democrats supporting this bill. There are enough votes in the Senate to override the veto, and only 20 votes too few in the House. Republican Charles Grassley, not a liberal, seems passionate on the issue [and on trying to override]. This is not a simple left-right issue, although extremists on both sides have been quick to take up predictable positions.

Comment by Baritone on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 16:20:21 EDT

Had the Dems simply ammended SCHIPS as you suggest, Dave, it would have continued to leave millions of children without any adequate access to healthcare. To suggest that it was simply a political move on the part of the Dems, I would suggest that ALL the moves by ALL the Dems and Reps are political. These people are first and foremost politicians for crap sakes! What do you expect? B-tone

Comment by Dave Nalle on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 14:59:00 EDT

It's a lovely paranoid fantasy, Bliffle, but it bears no resemblance to the real world. No one sent me a memo, and as far as I can tell this SCHIP problem originated with Democrats in Congress. If they'd just extended it with minor improvements no one would ever have made an issue of it. Dave

Comment by bliffle on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:54:39 EDT

"SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You" What 'they' aren't telling you is that this is a red herring to make a fuss while 'they' allocate hundreds of billions more to the Iraq invasion and to prepare to invade Iran. One can imagine the scene in the Neocon War Room in DC: "we need something to distract the (gullible) US public from the next couple hundred billion$ of invasion money" says Cheney. "get me Karl Rove on the phone!" "That's easy, just make a big noise about something that everyone has an opinion on, that'll keep the peasants preoccupied" says Karl. "It's a simple matter of bread and circuses". So they send down orders to the ink-stained wretches at their various newspapers, etc. Even to the petty neocons on blogs, tiny little outfits like BC. One can almost hear Nalle enthusiastically acquiescing with "HUA!". Or was that "heil"?

Comment by Clavos on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:33:48 EDT

There already is a thriving black market in the southeastern states for cigarettes from North Carolina and Virginia, which, for obvious reasons are much less taxed than cigarettes sold elsewhere. I can remember buying bootleg NC cigarettes here in Florida all the way back in the 60s.

Comment by Cindy D on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 11:56:15 EDT

Cigarettes have already been taxed into absurdity. I predict a new market in home-grown tobacco, complete with new laws to determine "personal use" quantities versus quantities that suggest an intent to sell.

Comment by handyguy on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 11:37:46 EDT

The cigarette-tax provision is, pardon the expression, just smoke and mirrors. The Pay As You Go rules in Congress require that every bill pay for itself - except, apparently, Pentagon spending. The cigarette tax increase will probably never actually become law - look how enormous it is, a 300% increase or something. So the bill will probably end up adding to the deficit. But to some of us, if there has to be deficit spending, better to use it on good social programs than rotten foreign policy.

Comment by bliffle on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 07:43:07 EDT

"It's not heartless, Bliffle, it's just part of the way the system works." The way the system works! Ahhhh, so if Joe Blow, driven into bankruptcy by medical bills for his children and desperate, bops you on the head in a dark Austin street, takes your cash and steals your car, that's just part of the way the system works? Because surely the system, or perhaps the meta-system, worked that way. And if I said so I wouldn't be heartless?

Comment by Cindy D on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 03:21:25 EDT

so, no, the government won't "take care" of them.

Comment by Cindy D on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 03:20:34 EDT

"...they likely will not be able to afford their health care when they succeed in making themselves sick, so society (I.e., the government) will have to take care of them. More likely, they'll end up paying the cigarette taxes and then not be able to afford their medication.

Comment by Baritone on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 00:34:03 EDT

The five billion that Bush requested would not be adequate to cover those now included in the program. The intent of raising the income limits to - as I heard it - three times the poverty limit or around $60000. was to include more middle income families who don't qualify for other government programs, but who also cannot afford or, for whatever reasons, cannot obtain private health insurance. I do agree that funding the program via an additional cigarette tax is a poor choice. Why not spread it out a bit more? As suggested above include some other luxury or discretionary items - say booze, sweets, including candies, ice cream, other snack foods and the like. Perhaps cigarettes as well. Smokers are very put upon these days. I don't smoke but know a number of people who do, and most of them are not, in fact, poor. As an aside I truly think that if some of these folks stopped smoking cold turkey, murder rates would soar. A lot of people would kill for a cigarette. (I'm only partly joking.) Of course, I do see the expansion of SCHIP as a step toward national health care. Unlike most of you above, I see that as a good thing. I doubt that many who oppose national health care are without private coverage or perhaps have enough resources to purchase their own hospital wing. Those of us without access to health insurance - some forty million of us - see it all in a far different light. Baritone

Comment by Clavos on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Thu, 4 Oct 2007 23:03:38 EDT

Doug, I think we actually agree. I'm saying that the government shouldn't be concerned about people too stupid (or pigheaded or weak willed) to safeguard their own health to the point of forcing the rest of us to pay for those people's healthcare. I was responding to Devin who opined that levying a heavy tax on cigarettes was unfair to poor people, who are the majority of the people who continue to smoke. Devin's argument (as is so often the case these days) was that the tax burden should be imposed on the wealthier people, who are better able to afford it.

Comment by Doug Hunter on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Thu, 4 Oct 2007 22:50:15 EDT

"That is not fair to the nonsmoking taxpayers, is it?" Life's not fair. Arguments along those lines are the downfall of freedom. Since the government has taken responsibility for healthcare and the environment, everything you do to yourself and every interaction you have with the physical world is now subject to government regulation. Today it's cigarettes and transfats, tomorrow it's meat, sugar, and going out in the sun. What's next? Will it end up like the matrix with us all encapsulated in pods 'for our own good'. Not slaves to machines of our creation but enslaved by our own fears. Freedom to do only the 'right' things isn't really freedom at all.

Comment by Clavos on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Thu, 4 Oct 2007 21:56:03 EDT

"I mean smoking is so bad for a person's health, that you would think that everyone would have quit by now. Unfortunately in the real world, people don't always act in the way society wants them to." That's true, but by complaining about the government's taxing of cigarettes, you're saying that they should have the right to make themselves very sick. And since you correctly point out that many of them are poor people who cannot afford those taxes, they likely will not be able to afford their health care when they succeed in making themselves sick, so society (I.e., the government) will have to take care of them. That is not fair to the nonsmoking taxpayers, is it?

Comment by Devin on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Thu, 4 Oct 2007 21:15:06 EDT

"Because, Devin, making them illegal will not reduce the number of smokers any more than than the laws that make marijuana, cocaine, and heroin illegal reduce the numbers of drug addicts." That's true, but the government is still making a profit from peoples addictions. To me that seems wrong. Sometimes addictition can be difficult to overcome. "People can quit smoking without getting "treatment." I did, 22 years ago, after smoking for 26 years." Well thats good that you did that. Smoking is very unhealthy and our nation would improve as a whole if everyone quit. However a lot of people do not have the will power to do it. I mean smoking is so bad for a person's health, that you would think that everyone would have quit by now. Unfortunately in the real world, people don't always act in the way society wants them to.

Comment by Cindy D on SCHIP: What They Aren't Telling You

Thu, 4 Oct 2007 20:35:08 EDT

We are in deficit spending every month because of Iraq, which costs more in a quarter than this bill will cost in five years. The Iraq war is the equivalent of pouring cash down a rathole. The money spent on Schip, even the contentious parts, will be used for a good purpose. Period. Bush should be in prison.