Tag: SCHIP

Maverick to AZ children: MARK IT ZERO!!!! You are entering a world of pain

Crossposted at Daily Kos

Image Hosting by PictureTrail.com This is GOOD NEWS for John McCain, and it comes at the expense of 42,000 Arizona children. What a sellout maverick.

    Roughly translated, McCain and the Arizona GOP’s message to sick AZ children would read like this . . . .

    Dear Tiny Tim,

    SCHIP costs money that should be going to tax cuts for the rich. Get a job and buy private insurance. Until then, don’t get sick, and if you do, die quickly.

                      Tough shit, Sen. John McCain

    U.S. Sen. John McCain may finally get his health-care wish, which is less care for fewer of Arizona’s children.

    The Arizona legislature voted to permanently end the state’s participation in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), 13 years after McCain voted against it and 3 years after leading the charge against reauthorizing the popular bi-partisan program.

    McCain’s home state of Arizona is now the first and only state to ever opt out of SCHIP.

For Immediate Release

Rodney Glassman U.S. Senate

Exploratory Committee

More below the fold . . .  

Considered Forthwith: House Energy and Commerce Committee

Note: This essay turns Orange around 8 p.m. Sunday. It will also be on Congress Matters and is posted on my own blog.

Welcome to the ninth installment of “Considered Forthwith.”

This weekly series looks at the various committees in the House and the Senate. Committees are the workshops of our democracy. This is where bills are considered, revised, and occasionally advance for consideration by the House and Senate. Most committees also have the authority to exercise oversight of related executive branch agencies. If you want to read previous dairies in the series, search using the “forthwith” tag. I welcome criticisms and corrections in the comments.

This week, I will examine the House Energy and Commerce Committee. There is a lot going on in this committee, including speed reading to neutralize a GOP stalling tactic.

Shameless, Shameful and Unbelievable

Crossposted from DailyKos.

This is Really Hard to Believe is the name of a new article by Barry Nolan that is now up on the ePluribus Media journal. The title of this diary reflects three things this non-diary diary represents: a shameless plug about a shamefully neglected topic, and the unbelievable stories that Barry encounters at the Battered Mother’s Custody Conference (YouTube link) that was recently held in Albany.

You need to read Barry’s piece. Make the jump for a little more info, a minor rant, and the opportunity to flame me in comments if this diary offends you.

The fact that this topic often fails to receive the attention that it deserves offends me.

Rush Is Right

A citizen of Republican-occupied territory, I frequently tune in to government radio in order to monitor the movements, mental and physical, of the enemy.

This morning I turned on the Grand Poobah of GOoPerdom himself, Rush Limbaugh, and was extremely discomfited to find myself nodding along in agreement, disconsolately reduced to mumbling, in the words of Limbaugh’s own blowharding bumpersticker, “Rush Is Right.”

I reproduce the relevant portions of his monologue below, because I want desperately to be wrong about this. I would like someone, anyone, to show me that, in the substance if not the rhetoric of what he says, Rush is not, in fact, right.

Can You Persuade Me to Support S-CHIP?

I pose this as a direct challenge to the community: can you persuade me to support the recently vetoed bill to expand S-CHIP?  Support for this bill, and for an attempt to override the President’s veto, is nearly universal here.  Despite that, I intend to challenge the community to justify this to me. 

It is not truly important for you to bother to do this.  I am only one person, and few people share my opinion.  Further, whether or not you agree with me, this is very advantageous political theater, and undermining it by seriously questioning its foundations has disadvantages.  That being said, I’ll make my case, and I’ll even give you reason to believe you can succeed in converting me.

Kucinich will vote to override Bush veto w/poll

Although he’s still unhappy with a children’s health insurance plan adopted by Congress, Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich said today that he’s planning to vote to override President Bush’s veto of the bill “because I think that the president has to be held to an accounting.”
http://blog.clevelan…

Investigative Action Blog: S-CHIP Veto Override Oct 18

Here’s my first IAB diary. This is a collaborative effort. I am going to try to post as much as I have and keep updating this as I go. Positive suggestions and critiques only, please.

DemFromCT is all over this one, so this is great, but let’s get more specific.

The vote is October 18th.

Democratic leaders scheduled the showdown for Oct. 18 to allow two weeks for pressure to build on Republicans. A union-led organization said it would spend more than $3 million trying to influence the outcome.

Still working on finding out exactly how many votes are needed in each house of Congress to win this, and what we know about who’s voting how. If you have that available, post in comments and let me know.  I’ll update.

Investigative Issue Action Blogging: An Intro Diary

Yesterday Armando was blogging about the Netroots being at a crossroads regarding specifically issue action and especially about Iraq, and I proposed a strategy for altering that trajectory called Investigative Issue Action Blogging.  I’d like to flesh out that idea here this morning.

Here’s the basic idea: Create blogposts about specific legislation or actions to be investigated that can be researched collaboratively and acted upon, in order to collectively lobby to move a piece of legislative action forward. This includes nominations (i.e. Attorney General), investigations (i.e. Blackwater or Wiretapping) and legislation (SCHIP, FISA, IRAQ, GLOBAL WARMING on and on and on.)