So John Kerry won in Iowa. I’m sure we all know that by now. I’m still waiting for someone to seriously fill out my questionnaire. The most recent poster was about to, but then he skirted my references questions by calling me lazy. Yes, I know it was partially in jest, but that’s missing the point. I’m backing up my case, I’m doing my research, but dang it, I want to see someone back up their case as well. I haven’t seen anybody do that yet, and it’s only making me trust the Democrats less. For instance, I was watching Meet the Press on Sunday, and Tim Russert said that the oft repeated complaint from the Democrats that health care is in shambles in this country is actually false. Did you know that 85% of this nation’s population is covered by health insurance? How can that possibly be called a bad thing? Only 15% are not currently covered by health care; that is a ridiculously small percentage, especially when you factor in margin for error, the homeless, those unable to receive benefits because of minimum wage jobs, etc. That’s one concrete example of using pure, baseless rhetoric to simply enrage a misinformed public. They’re spreading lies – lies they know full-well to be dishonest – to get votes. That’s downright wrong. Quit lying to me, dang it, just tell me what you’re going to do. If they honestly believe that a percentage of 15% of the nation without health care is such a travesty, then tell me what you’re going to do about it. Gephardt said his plan was to raise taxes by $1,000 to $2,500 for the middle class in order to cover that 15%. Is that what we really want? I certainly don’t want that. But Dick Gephardt didn’t even have the guts to give the math, or even defend his plan when Tim Russert called him on it, explaining the exact figures, and using analysis to back up his questions. Instead, Dick Gephardt just kept calling it “fuzzy math”, without even rebutting the issue or backing up his policy. I’m very glad that man is dropping out of the race, but I can’t say I’m all together pleased with the ones still remaining. John Edwards is the only one thus far that I’ve yet to see lie in such a way, but I haven’t done as much research on him yet. I’m still holding out hope that perhaps he’s a gentleman and a true statesman after all, because so far I’ve lost faith in the others.
And by the way, everything I just said about Dick Gephardt can be found at the link I provided above. If you didn’t see it, here’s the URL directly:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3979910/
That took me maybe two minutes to produce that link to back up my statements. Why won’t people do this for my questionnaire? It’s not that hard; do your research, people. It’s so important. I’m doing mine, but all I want is to see yours, because maybe you’ve seen something I haven’t. But I want it backed up, I want it referenced. Give me a place to start, that’s all I want.
I’m glad the candidates are finally being whittled down. It’s about time.
I got a lot of work done today on my proposal for the expansion of the Daily Prophet. I mostly focused on finishing up the tail ends of the research that I needed to pull together. You wouldn’t believe some of the statistics I found about illiteracy in this nation and throughout the world. It’s just frightening. For instance, at least 50% of the unemployed are functionally illiterate. It is estimated that $5 billion a year in taxes goes to support people receiving public assistance who are unemployable due to illiteracy. Among adults with low literacy skills, 43% live in poverty. Among adults with strong literacy skills, less than 5% live in poverty. 75% of unemployed adults are illiterate. The estimated cost of illiteracy to taxpayers and businesses is $20 billion per year. 75% of Fortune 500 companies provide some level of remedial training for an estimated 8 million workers at an estimated cost of $300 million per year. Low literacy is strongly related to crime. 70% of prisoners fall into the lowest two levels of reading proficiency. 75% of today
I love you, but let’s look at the “facts” as you laid them out. 15% of people without health coverage is 37,500,000 people. That’s not “good”. That’s not “ridiculously small”. That’s horrible. Those people have no coverage, none. They probably don’t have jobs where they can buy presciption drugs, or get dental care for their kids, prenatal care, healthy baby screenings or regular checkups. 15% is a travesty. Playing percentages is easy. “15” looks like a small number until you realize that a small percentage of a very large number is still a very large number. 37,500,000 people unable to provide their families with basic health services. Think about it. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich have caused communities and states to raise property taxes and cut back on services. This is all fact. Nothing you state there is a lie.
I have to agree with Keven about the percentages thing. The unemployment rate (although it’s falling now) is somewhere around 6%, and no one blows that off as an insignificant number. Millions of people can’t provide for themselves, and we pay for it. See http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm for the official statistics.
I would have thought that you’d be all for providing health care for as many people as possible, considering your own medical situation. If you’d been unlucky enough to be in that 15%, where would you be today?
I know health care is a complicated issue, and I don’t think universal health care is necessarily the panacea it sounds like, but I’m really not comfortable with 15% of our population unable to get medical help.
Darn! Kevin said what I was going to say.
Anyway here is a webpage about Bush’ lies that is worth checking out http://www.bushlies.com/topten.php
I was completely joking about the being too lazy thing. I just din’t feel like finishing it since it was so incredibly long. It is hard to prove or disprove things. It takes time and effort(and I’m a slacker) and in the end it is up to the other person to determine if they will accept it. If I asked you prove to me that Howard Dean likes bowling or that John Kerry isn’t Christ reborn, you would have a hard time doing it though we both clearly “know” that Kerry isn’t.
Finally in the end what is to be gained by spending all that time. You are one voter, you live in a state that will pretty much assuredly vote Republican and so its mighty, mighty unlikely your vote won’t effect the final result. Also it seems you pretty much have your mind made up already (there is nothing wrong with that) and there is of course the fact that I really don’t care who wins.
I just said that’s not as bad as everyone’s making it out to be. Yes, Levi, I’m all for improving healthcare, but none of the policies I’ve heard from the Democrats will make anything any better. Nationalized healthcare – has anyone ever talked to someone from a nation that has nationalized healthcare about their experiences? It’s insane. I knew an old man in Australia who had been gashed in the head so badly that they couldn’t stop the bleeding. He went to the emergency room and they couldn’t even *look* at him for 12 hours. They made him sit there. I’ve gone into emergency rooms here for head wounds – insurance or no insurance, American emergency rooms *always* treat head wounds first.
Then there’s a good friend of mine in England – after having surgery to take care of a serious spinal problem, a few days later he had trouble breathing and he realized that the right side of his chest was turning black and blue. He went in to the casualty there, they told him to come back in two weeks, that there was nothing he could do. Thank heavens he was part of the social upper class in England so that he could go see his private doctor – which he pays an arm and a leg for – and as soon as he did, his doctor had to rush him into surgery. In the process of his first operation, a few internal organs had been punctured and he was bleeding internally. And yet nationalized healthcare couldn’t do him any good because they were too busy to care for him – if he had waited two weeks, he would have been dead.
Nationalized healthcare is not the answer. If I had been covered under nationalized healthcare, I would have lost my leg. My medical bills came to more than $5 million dollars. Do you think nationalized healthcare would have cared for me so well?
So yes, I am passionate about healthcare, which is why I’m passionately against most of the democrats’ plans. They won’t work, and they don’t make sense.
Just forget I ever brought this up. I was just trying to say that it’s not as bad as the Democrats are making it out to be – even Tim Russert said the same thing, so it’s not just me. I’ve also heard that Clinton had a worse record, so it’s actually not even Bush’s fault. Yes, it’s still a problem that needs to be addressed, but *not* with nationalized healthcare. That would be a disaster.
I’m going to the DMV now. Let’s just drop this. Nothing I’m saying is going to make any difference, and you’re right, my vote doesn’t count. I’m just going to write in Oprah Winfrey and be done with it.
Well, let’s not drop it. I don’t think anyone on the Democratic side is saying nationalized healthcare for EVERYONE. They’re saying that those 37 million people need to be covered, which is hard to disagree with. While the plans vary – from the untenable (or however you spell that) far left where we would have nationalized health care and everyone has the same coverage to the middle, where you keep the insurance you have, but the government or insurance companies are allowed to buy blocks of prescription drugs at a greatly reduced rate for their insurees, like the government does in Canada (which is why their prescriptions are cheaper). There are some innovative and realistic plans out there. I’ll try and blog about some of them later today.
For once, I’m staying out of the political debate. Besides, I get all my news from Comedy Central, so what can that be worth?
On those IRS forms, Monica did tell me she’d be happy to be the daily prophet’s CFO (Chief Financial Officer) or at least an accounting consultant. Send me a more detailed email on the tax forms, and I’ll pass it along. She’s actually done some work on non-profit organizations before.
Heather,
I think I understand you. While 37.5m is a problem, it’s certainly not what I would call a shambles. And while the Demos cry over 3 million jobs lost, they conveniently ignore the fact that some 250K of those have been made up in the last few months. That means there are still a lot of unemployed, but they try to make it sound worse than it is. That said, I really don’t think the economy has all that much to do with the President. He can influence it in some ways, but not control it. Shoot, if you wanted, you could blame Clinton for bursting the bubble in Mar ’00, even though I couldn’t find means to blame him.
Cameron – Of course you’d understand what I’m trying to say. It seems that’s going both ways when it comes to us in politics. So thanks for sticking up for me. 🙂