miserable sons of sounds-like-witches

Bush Rule Makes Fetuses Eligible for Health Benefits

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 Ñ The Bush administration issued final rules today allowing states to define a fetus as a child eligible for government-subsidized health care under the Children's Health Insurance Program.

" `Child' means an individual under the age of 19, including the period from conception to birth," the regulation says.

Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, said the rule would increase the number of low-income women who receive prenatal care. "What better way to allow kids to have the best start in life, a healthy start?" Mr. Thompson asked.

Here's the thing, though. The mothers aren't eligible. They aren't going to make the mothers eligible. They won't get post-partum care. They won't get follow-up care. They won't get health benefits. They won't get welfare or food stamps or protection from abusive employers or husbands or boyfriends.

Anti-abortion activists, however, who are looking for a camel's nose to stick into the Roe v Wade tent, are getting a big boost, as are an estimated 30,000 fetuses a year.

The difference is, nine months from now the Bush administration will still care about the activists.

short stories

This, over at PLA, is just a wonderful piece of writing - sad, humane, graceful and very, very funny (I vote for occasional guest blogging from Mrs. Mr. Meredith).

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Why our fearless leader really, really doesn't like people who think they're so smart

The grand finale came when George Bush grudgingly caved to the fact that we couldn't garner support from a single ally in the world other than the Tony Blair, whose allegiance has been pocked marked with wishy-washy caveats. Surprising everyone, he seemed to be calling the international community on the carpet, calling everyone to the task of enforcing the spirit of a fierce United Nations obligation.

Of course, no one in the situation room seemed to plan for Iraq's complete agreement to the resumption inspections and their checkmating has forced the Bush administration to pull off the mask of collaboration and start loudly writing their names in the snow again. Bush seems to be saying "War, goddam you, I told all you international sissies that you could help us pay for a war or get the hell out of the way."

The rest of the world, not quite as eager to start killing people, had mistaken Mr. Bush's podium showmanship for a second chance at finding an alternate to apocalypse policy. In fact, even the consideration of any option other than war prompted Bush to remark, "It's time to determine if they will be a force for peace or an ineffective debating society." Take that, you bunch of girls.

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A transcript of the Bush-McBride debate

Don't want to seem to be telling you what to enjoy here, but a particular favorite of mine was the moment when McBride brought up, um, educating children (let's assume we know where they all are, OK?) instead of just testing them a whole lot, and Bush responded with this:

WE NEED TO MAKE PUBLIC EDUCATION THE FIRST PRIORITY, NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF FRAIL ELDERS AND THE DEVELOPMENT ALLEY DISABLED, NOT AT THE RESPONSE OF OUR ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS.

IF WE RAISE TAXES TOO HIGH, WE'LL CHOKE OFF THE ECONOMIC ECONOMY AND A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE WILL SUFFER.

From Time magazine:

Jeb didn't freeze his tax cut lightly. He spent much of his first term making generous reductions, though nothing like the $1.6 trillion break his brother enacted. But after 9/11, Florida had a $1.3 billion hole in its $20.3 billion budget. Bush and the legislature made a series of painful cuts in services, including a $591 million slash to public education.

But Florida is one of a small handful of states that still relies on sales taxes for its money instead of an income tax. When your leading industry is tourism, those sale taxes can be generous, but in hard times, they dry up even faster than other taxes. So Jeb had no choice but to save $128 million by delaying the tax cut for a year. Not an easy choice to make with an election coming up, but Bush has had solid approval ratings for most of his term. And he's not alone: Republican governors in New York, Michigan and Louisiana have proposed delaying tax cuts this year as a way to shore up their budgets.

So there's a choice Jeb didn't mention for Mr. McBride - either victimize cripples and old people and the environment, decide not to give Florida's teachers manageable class sizes, or maybe just repeal a really really stupid tax cut in light of the new economic reality which says that an economy fueled by tourism and sales tax doesn't do so good when your brother keeps rattling sabers and nobody wants to get on a plane.

Just, you know, saying.

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On being a democrat in Florida

k, this is old, but I have to put it here so I can quote this line:

I'd pay cash money to hear Jerry Regier quote Scripture on womanly submissiveness to Janet Reno.

Oh, me too.

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The FEC is investigating the connection between McBride and a teacher's union-funded group that put on $2 million in pro-McBride ads during the primary to see if the ads constitute an illegal campaign contribution (presumably Our Fearless Leader's torrent of funds into Florida are kosher). The FEC had already decided that McBride did nothing wrong, but after fervent lobbying they reversed themselves.

Let me introduce you to one of the lobbyists (and, aptly enough, that is what he does):

A Florida Elections Commission member who urged the panel to investigate Democrat Bill McBride owns a business that received $20,000 from the Republican Party, rents office space at state party headquarters and lists as one of his clients Gov. Jeb Bush.

Richard Heffley, a lobbyist, also once had as a client Tidewater Consulting, whose president served as the GOP lawyer at the Aug. 15 hearing that reversed the FEC staff’s finding that McBride had done nothing illegal.

Heffley was one of two commissioners who pushed the panel to investigate television ads produced and aired by the teachers union supporting McBride. Heffley did not disclose his financial ties to the Republican Party at the meeting.

The other commissioner was a Mr. Rancourt, a former deputy chief of staff to Bush who has donated more than $25,000 to the party’s state and federal accounts.

Of Mr. Heffley's political connections:

Campaign records show that Heffley’s "Strategic Direction" political phonebank received $20,654 from the Republican Party between June and December of 2001. Heffley said he hopes to receive more business from the party in the coming months.

Heffley also acknowledged that he rents a suite from the party at its downtown Tallahassee headquarters.

As to his relationship with Tidewater, Heffley said that the company’s president, Richard Coates, was not with the firm when Strategic Direction did some work for it. Coates represented the Republican Party on Aug. 15.

A lawyer for the Florida Education Association is asking that Hefley be forcibly recused, since his ethical antenna seems to be a bit bent here.

From Mr. Heffley's impassioned plea for an investigation:

"What we’re basically telling the people of the state of Florida (is) the floodgates are open," Heffley said. "You can do any kind of campaign activity. You can exceed any kind of contribution limits. Coordinate to . . . your heart’s content. Use electioneering language. Use partisan language. Use anything."

Clearly.

sigh

Looks like the robust employment situation is a bit of a mirage


In the last two years, the official jobless rate has risen and an additional two million people appear to have dropped out of the labor force. Today, the real level of unemployment for men probably approaches the level of the recession-mired early 80's.

THE unemployment rate doesn't mean what it did 20 years ago," said Robert H. Topel, an economist at the University of Chicago and author of the most detailed recent study of the changes. "Employment opportunities for the less skilled are not what they used to be, so people just leave the labor force."

To pay their monthly bills, many of these missing workers have turned to disability insurance, a government program under Social Security that has become the centerpiece of the new American welfare state. Since 1990, the number of people receiving disability pay has nearly doubled, to 5.4 million, and the government now spends far more on the program than it does for food stamps or unemployment insurance.

People who once may have worked through injuries or chronic pain, particularly those without a college education, are increasingly making a choice economic planners did not foresee. They have decided a government benefit, in the form of the roughly $800 in average monthly disability pay, is more attractive than any job.

Let's see. The federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Full time workers work 35 hours a week.

$5.15 x 35 x 52 = $9373 - .075% social security tax ($702.975) = $8670 /12 = 722.50 (without allowing for taxes or minimum income tax credits)

So what do we have here?

a) people who voluntarily remove themselves from the workforce and cease to support social security , even if they don't work in the underground economy, are available to perform childcare and other expensive necessities while increasing their household income significantly. IOW, thanks to fervent (some party or other) resistance to raising, or even having, the minimum wage, a rational actor who wants the best for their family will go on disability and cease to contribute to supporting the system.

and they have

b) The american people as a group have learned in large numbers that the system is one where they won't get a fair shake, and that their only choice is to game it.

and they have

c) Businesses who have been slavishly catered to by allowing the minimum wage in real dollars to drop precipitously are willing to leave the country in droves anyway, to avoid taxes and to exploit third world workers and lack of environmental and worker safety laws.

and they have

d) The party in power doesn't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about the blue collar workers who put them in power, and they have no qualms at all about using you people like kleenex.

and they have

note to blue collar "Reagan democrats": You may be doing what you feel you have to, and I can understand that. The fact that you got where you are by voting wrong and getting screwed rather than by fucking the wrong person doesn't make you morally superior to a "welfare mother"

Just ask yourself how much of your money who is walking around with, OK?

Gasp! [party affiliation noun]s do that too?!?

We've made plans at work to go to the Union Square Crochet and Knit Out. (Check the link for other locations this fall).

I've just finished crocheting a freestyle sweater for my daughter. If it works out well, I'm going to do one in a different stitch in heathered blue yarn with a funky poof-yarn fringe. I'm making an afghan with my 98-year-old grandmother. She can't see, but she can still crochet. Next is a purple sweater for my mom's red hat lady meetings.

I'm going to learn to knit. My coworkers are going to learn to crochet. I'm maybe going to teach my new pattern to some folks. The kid wants to see other kids crochet.

It's been years since my few domestic accomplishments have been fashionable. I'm trying to hook HM in while she's still Miss Fashion Girl.

Also, my gnocchi and red sauce kicks ass.

for a liberal, of course.

see, this is what I mean

well, no, it isn't, but I am now all about Angry White Girl now that I've read this:

I have existed in this world for some 27 years now, and during this period of time I have borne witness to a great many things; "Jaws 3D" trading cards,people standing in line to see "E.T.", people not standing in line to see "E.T." and of course the nigh amaranthine slew of exciting new personal absorbency products claiming themselves to offer the long sought after superlative personal absorbency experience in the field of personal absorbency related matters.

I practically never get to say amarinthine.

Actually, I haven't the vaguest clue what it means.

Well, I think I sort of do, but it would have never crossed my mind to use it.

They pour gallons upon gallons of unnaturally blue hued fluids onto said überproducts and razzle-dazzle us, the viewing audience, by demonstrating just how much unnaturally blue hued fluid they can pick up without (noticeably) cutting away, and we dutifully march out rank and file to purchase them, that we might better enshroud our leaky nature as human beings from other human beings lest they call us "yucky."

Goldang, kiddies, that there is some writing.

You be nice to this female, or we will look sternly at whatever small scraps of you she leaves behind.