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Wednesday, March 16
Support Our Troops? Not if You're Republican
by
Linda Thieman
on Wed 16 Mar 2005 04:44 PM CST
 Support Our Troops? Not if You're Republican
by Randall Rolph, Nashua, Iowa
The U.S.
House of Representatives voted yesterday, March 15, 220 to 195, to
block any debate or vote on amendments to provide additional funding
for veterans' health care and mental health care in the War
Supplemental bill.
Rep.
DeLauro (D-CT) and Rep. Hooley (D-OR) were prepared to offer amendments
to provide better veterans' health care. The DeLauro amendment would
have added $238 million to the VA for post-deployment mental health
care. The GAO has reported that 6 out of 7 VA medical officials believe
they may not have the capacity for increased demand for Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder treatment. The Hooley amendment would have provided
$1.2 billion for FY 2005 for veterans' health care. This would have
helped facilities with operating deficits and hiring freezes, and it
would have reduced wait times for veterans to access high quality VA
provided health care.
The
House voted 220 to 195 to refuse to allow any debate or vote on these
amendments. The 220 lawmakers who voted not to have debate or a vote on
the DeLauro or Hooley amendments were all Republicans. The 195
lawmakers who wanted to debate and vote on the DeLauro and Hooley
amendments were all Democratic members and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM).
Let all
give a big round of applause to Iowa's Republican Representatives for
their unyielding support of our young men and women in uniform fighting
in Iraq. Come to think of it, I bet every single one of them has a
"Support Our Troops" sticker on his car.
Odds 'n' Ends
by
Chad Thompson
on Wed 16 Mar 2005 01:16 PM CST
 Odds 'n' Ends
There's so much stuff I wanted to write about that I couldn't really sort things out. So, here we go with "Odds 'n' Ends".
[Insert a FoxNews-style "Whoosh" Here.]
Yesterday in D.C., a "Sense of the Senate" amendment was added to a general Senate budget resolution. The purpose statement read as follows:
To
express the sense of the Senate that Congress should reject any Social
Security plan that requires deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in
debt.
"Sense
of the Senate" amendments are usually political freebies - they don't
really force anyone into uncomfortable positions and allow for a good
measure of pandering. One might think that this would be a
no-brainer, passing 100-0, saving arguments over "deep benefit cuts"
and "massive increase in debt" for another day.
Guess what? This amendment was defeated.
The roll call vote is here. Evidently, our own Chuck Grassley voted in favor of "deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in debt."
The Iowa
House Republicans show off their priorities again. Rather than
take up and debate important things that we call "the budget" - it was grandstanding time yesterday.
"We
didn't bring this fight on," said Michael Hartwig, vice president of
Marriage Matters of Iowa. "We feel like the institution of marriage is
being attacked through the judicial body."
No
matter where you fall on this issue, I can tell you that the failure of
this Legislature to take up serious legislation on the methamphetamine
epidemic in Iowa is a direct and real threat to both families and
marriages, not to mention the economic prospects of the next generation.
Instead, the House GOP just wastes everyone's time with this all-too-typical nonsense by using a full day to discuss this "important" issue.
In the
"places to visit" category, there is a rather active little community
posting on politics and other topics at a website called Iowa Underground. I've already pulled a few interesting items from various posters - you might enjoy it, too.
A
final requiem: I have been running a site for a little over
a year called the "Iowa Populist". My posting for Blog for Iowa
and the inevitable "real work" contributed to my not updating the blog
for some time. I took down the website and cancelled the hosting
service last week as my contract with a provider ended.
Thanks to all who read and commented there in the past - I hope you'll continue to read and comment here on "Blog for Iowa".
Bush Sells Snake Oil to Cure Social Security
by
Trish Nelson
on Wed 16 Mar 2005 08:00 AM CST
 Bush Sells Snake Oil to Cure Social Security
MinutemanMedia.com
by Donald Kaul
[George W.] Bush’s efforts to sell his peculiar “privatization” remedy
for the Social Security ‘crisis’ haven’t been going well. Recent polls
show that Mr. Bush gets his lowest marks on his handling of that issue.
But, like any good snake oil salesman, he presses on. He’s been
crisscrossing the country telling people that Social Security is sick
and that only privatization will make it well.
His sales pitch has been characteristically Bushian - dismissive
of evidence and encased in syntax that is virtually impenetrable to logic.
Here’s what he said the other day:
“I’ve been reading the newspapers and been seeing some folks
saying ‘There’s not a problem, he’s just exaggerating.’
Well, I’m going to keep telling people we’ve got a problem
until it sinks in, because we’ve got one. You can’t dodge whether we have a
problem or not. Because, see, the next follow-on question to that is, if you’ve
got a problem, what do you Republicans and Democrats and a few independents
intend to do about it up there?’”
He also said that, under his proposed privatization fix,
income from personal accounts, goes to supplement the Social Security check
that you’re going to get from the federal government. “See, personal accounts
is an add-on to that which the government is going to pay you. It doesn’t
replace the Social Security system.”
That either means he doesn’t understand the plan he’s
proposed (always a possibility) or that he is outright lying (more likely). You
can’t pay full Social Security benefits and have part of the payroll tax going
into personal accounts at the same time. There’s just not enough money to go
around. The term “add-on” is generally used to mean a payment into a private
account above and beyond what now goes into the retirement system. That’s not
what Bush is not what Bush is proposing.
It’s always dangerous to assume that [George W.] Bush is as
dumb as he sounds. He gets what he wants too often to be written off as a
dunce. It’s far more likely that he’s deliberately trying to confuse and
frighten people about Social Security so that they’ll be stampeded into support
for his cockamamie privatization scheme.
And I wouldn’t bet against him. He’s calling his shock
troops into the battle. Business groups are ratcheting up multi-million-dollar
lobbying efforts and the airwaves will soon be filled with stories of Social
Security’s peril. (Like they care.) And the people who gave you the Swift Boat
veterans (remember them?) are joining the fight. They have been hired by USA
Next, a big-money conservative lobbying group, to trash AARP as they did John
Kerry.
They’re trying to brand the seniors lobbying group as a
left-liberal, gay marriage-loving cabal that is standing in the way of the
brave [Bush]’s efforts to save Social Security. You would think that absurd
on the face of it, but this bunch managed to convince a lot of voters that
Kerry’s Vietnam credentials (three purple hearts) weren’t as good as those of
Bush, who hid from the fray. Maybe they can convince people that AARP is a
bunch of hippies.
Personally, I doubt that Mr. Bush will get his plan enacted
this time around but he might get a piece of it now, then push for more later.
That’s the way the Conservative movement works: patiently, relentlessly.
Conservatives have been talking about getting rid of Social
Security for the past 35 years, ever since Barry Goldwater suggested it be made
voluntary. He was laughed out of the election in 1968 but here, 37 years later,
we’ve got a two-term president who’s pushing privatization - voluntary Social
Security by another name - and no one’s laughing.
This so-called Conservative movement is not conservative, of
course; it’s reactionary. It looks longingly back on a time when retirement was
the exclusive province of the rich.
For the rest of us, it was work ‘til you die and if you
couldn’t, hope you died young. That’s the golden sunset Captain Bush is
steering us into now, or trying to.
Donald Kaul recently retired as Washington
columnist for the Des Moines Register. He has covered the foolishness in our
nation’s capital for 29 years, winning a number of modestly coveted awards
along the way. Kaul's columns can be found at MinutemanMedia.org.
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