Search Results for ‘stupid hat’
In the midst of the stupidity over bloggers and the stupidity over his house, it’s worth noting that John Edwards presented a pretty significant and detailed heath care plan last week. The plan, which was analyzed in detail by Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic, provides universal health care but does so through the use of tax credits to create and fund entities for groups of peopuyle to purchase insurance called “health markets” as well as through an “individual mandate” which is a requirement that everyone b insured. It also allows Medicare to compete with private insurers to provide coverage to people through health markets. It is a complex plan that would be funded by rolling back the Bush tax cuts. Although it has the advantage of “giving people who have insurance something they lack now–more security and more choice–without taking away their coverage,” the complexity this engenders makes it difficult to sell. As Cohn notes “grafting universal coverage onto an already complicated system inevitably means drawing up a complicated plan. That’s not particularly helpful in the current media environment.”
The alternative is a straightforward single payer system like that in a bill before Congress, HR 676, that was introduced by John Conyers (and co-sponsored by Dave Loebsack.) This is the system used in the rest of the western world, which leads to significantly lower health care costs than what we have. A single payer plan would be much more effective but is considered less politically feasible. As a result, it is doubtful that any other serious candidate will advocate for it (as opposed to hopeless publicity seekers). However, it is still possible. The national debate on health care is moving increasingly towards a single payer solution. Edwards, by introducing his plan, laid down his marker but, as the debate develops, other candidates who either seek to flank him on the left or merely keep up with the national debate may introduce single payer plans similar to HR 676. In meantime, we will just have to wait and see what their policy teams cook up.
Barack Obama pledged in his annoucement yesterday that “we will have universal health care in America by the end of the next president’s first term.” However, he hasn’t unveiled his plan yet. In the meantime, John Edwards has been the first candidate to unveil a detailed health care plan. It may not be perfect but it is definitely worthy of respect.
February 11th, 2007
Iowa Progress has previously profiled a cutthroat Grinnellian, now we turn our attention to a Grinnell alum who has come up with a really dumb idea. Scott Raecker ‘84 is a Republican member of the State Legislature who introduced an amendment in the Iowa House to the anti-bullying bill which recently passed the State Senate. The bill is designed to prevent the real problem of bullying in Iowa’s public schools. How does Raecker’s amendment address the problem of bullying and harassment? It’s designed to protect the most vulnerable people in the state, members of Iowa General Assembly.
While it’s nice to protect such frail and fragile members of society, the amendment, if passed, would create all sorts of issues. If while Scott Raecker was speaking at a campaign event, you shouted “Hey Raecker, the only thing dumber than you is that amendment to the bullying bill you introduced,” and Raeker then stopped speaking, you would be guilty of bullying and harassing. You would have engaged in conduct based on a “mental ability or disability” that would have substantially interfered with Raeker’s “campaign performance.” This only skims the surface of the massive First Amendment issues this amendment would have created. However, there was another issue with the amendment that ultimately prevent its passage. It has nothing to do with bullying in schools.
So why did Scott Raeker introduce this amendment, (which was instantly ruled non-germane)? Because it was designed as a wrecking amendment. If it’s added to the bill, it makes a hash of it. And if it isn’t added, all the Democrats are on record supporting “bullying and harrassing of and by public officials.” The Republicans immediately tried overturn the Speaker’s ruling that the amendment was non germane. Predictably, it failed on a party-line vote.
Although the bill ended up passing the House by a vote of 62-37, it did so after hours of debate and more pointless wrecking amendments introduced by House Republicans. But none were quite as pointless and badly thought out as Scott Raecker’s. Many legislators introduce bills or amendments that are stupid, many others introduce bills or amendments that are unconstitutional. But few can say they’ve ever done as good a job of interweaving those two threads as Scott Raecker did yesterday.
February 8th, 2007
Well, we’re about a week out and things are starting to get crazy. If I were Chet Culver, I’d be feeling a little nervous. Though his website touts an eight-point lead over Nussle and claims no one else can beat him, I’m a little skeptical of this as a reason to vote for Culver.
First of all, I think we’re going to beat Nussle in the fall. Period.
Secondly, Blouin and Fallon have really made tremendous gains, which shouldn’t be taken lightly. Blouin has proved his vast experience in public service make him extremely qualified, and his colleagues sure seem to recognize it. Fallon has managed to overcome his ”cooky” image and appeal to the independent-minded and party-faithful alike, building a huge, old school grassroots network.
Thirdly, Chet Culver really just doesn’t stand out to me. I can look back at the campaign season and see how the other campaigns have grown and evolved, but Culver seems to just be the “I’m ahead in the polls” guy. We’ve all heard the jokes (often cruelly cutting and quite likely bad for everyone come June 7th) that maybe Culver isn’t the smartest crayon in the box, but to me it’s something else. Politicians should not only represent the people, they should also educate them. When has Culver raised the level of discourse?
May 31st, 2006
Political Forecast has a post on Mike Blouin running negative TV ads against Culver. The buzz around the ads is that they are ineffective and make Blouin look desperate. I agree—this sure doesn’t seem like a frontrunner’s tactic. Then again, does Blouin look any worse than Culver’s petty jabs during the debates? Remember the “flip-flop” comment?
So let’s not pretend this is the first shot, or that Culver doesn’t have a mud trebuchet himself.
When Blouin visited Grinnell a few weeks ago, he went out of his way to stress that he would never run negative ads, but that he would “defend himself” if necessary. Sadly, he’s gone back on his pledge and stooped low. Too bad Culver was already there.
Of course, there’s still one spotless candidate—Fallon. Unfortunately, he’s wearing that stupid, stupid, hat.
May 18th, 2006
I posted about this a few days ago: Nussle made the first TV buy of the 2006 gubernatorial election — and it only cost $500,000! The ad is now online, so watch it a few times (Quicktime, Windows Media). It’s short and incredibly empty of substance, but here’s what it claims (and why it’s flat-out wrong, line by line):
Nussle learned leadership “from the ground up.” That’s mostly just a stupid thing to say. I wonder whether they focus grouped to determine that the “from the ground up” leadership style was more appealing than other less creative, more conventional leadership styles. (The “don’t make a huge surplus into a huge deficit” style of leadership comes to mind as one potential alternative…)
Keep reading; the fun has just begun.
“In Congress, Jim is a leader in the fight to control spending and clean up the house ethics scandal.” I can’t believe he went there. My only guess why is that he knew the Democorats wouldn’t have the money to spend on response ads right now, so audiences wouldn’t hear about how he is as responsible as anyone in Washington for the devastating budget reversal that turned a $236 billion surplus into a $412 billion deficit.
And I’d like to see him try to prove the claim that he’s a leader in the fight to “clean up the house ethics scandal,” but I’m suspicious that the language here, too, is more “manipulative” than, say, “truthful.” The phrase “clean up the house ethics scandal” seems to achieve a number of marketing objectives: First, the language of “cleaning up a scandal” is a lot more favorable to Nussle than the language of “cleaning up a group of crooked politicians,” because Nussle is, on many accounts, a crooked politician. Second, calling it a “scandal” makes it sound like anyone who mentions it or tries to draw attention to it is just a gossip (a gossip who hates FREEDOM). And third, it makes Nussle’s position offensive rather than defensive. If his position were merely “I’m not scandalous,” it would be a weak, defensive position. “I fight scandal” is offense. And he has the money, so he can preempt us like that.
Nussle wants to “make Iowa’s schools the world’s best.” He should’ve thought about it before he co-sponsored the now-infamous No Child Left Behind Act, which attempted to force Iowa to model its education system after the bottom-of-the-barrel Texas system. You’d think that Nussle would at least realize that such a flawed un-funded mandate was a bad idea after the fact, but no, he still touts it on his generic, uninspired education flyer.
He also has his own plan, called “Empowering Parents With Choice in Education” (oh, so now he’s pro-choice). It is also just a tax credit, but it doubles as a creative backdoor into a school voucher program. Except, unlike the other places where school voucher programs have been proposed, this won’t be targeted towards the socioeconomically needy. He just wants to give away $1,500 in tax credits to anyone who wants to send a kid to private school. That’s per kid (maximum $6,000 for married couples or $3,000 for single filers). Iowa already ranks in the bottom half of the nation in per-pupil spending and is losing teachers to bordering states. Do we really need to make it worse? And is a tax credit alone really something Nussle has the right to call an education plan of any kind? I’m thinking not.
Nussle wants to make Iowa “the renewable energy capital of the world.” According to Nussle’s “Energy Project 20/20″, that mostly means tax breaks. Past that, his position is wishy-washy. He does borrow some pretty sweet corn photos from the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, though.
Nussle wants to promote “affordable health care.” He has no health care plan on his web site. He does have a PDF of his “record on health care”, though, and it ain’t pretty. The first vote listed is, well, see for yourself: “Nussle Fought for Iowa Hospitals to Ensure Fair Reimbursements, Extended Coverage and Greater Flexibility.” It made sure hospitals got more money, which Nussle thinks might have also meant employees got paid more. In particular, “providing higher payments for all physicians with a 5% bonus payment to physicians in rural areas.” Way to fight for the underdog.
The second “accomplishment” listed is merely that, as budget chairman, Nussle oversaw the passage of the 2006 budget, which, among about a bazillion other things, “resulted in continued funding for Medicare and Medicaid.”
The rest are generally pro-hospital and pro-doctor (including fighting against “frivolous law suits” and voting “to cut away needless paperwork”).
And finally, he claims that he’ll “energize Iowa’s future.” I don’t see that happening.
April 24th, 2006
