Are these retards smoking crack, laced with heroin, PCP, meth, horse shit and urine, OR WHAT?!
Talk about PANIC and HYSTERIA! Oh, and LIBERALISM is ON THE RISE! Suck on that HARD!
Showing posts with label Common Dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Common Dreams. Show all posts
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, July 26, 2007
My Challenge to the Presidential Candidates by Michael Moore
Well hot damn! Common Dreams is on a roll today!
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Published on Thursday, July 26, 2007 by Huffington Post
My Challenge to the Presidential Candidates
by Michael Moore
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/26/2776
The American government isn’t afraid to hand out free health care. Senior citizens get it. Veterans get it. As SiCKO shows you, even the detainees at Guantanamo Bay get it.
So, too, do our federal elected officials. It doesn’t matter if they are Republicans or Democrats, young or old, healthy or sick — they are entitled to free, government-provided health insurance. They don’t have to worry about being able to pay for medical help — even if many of their constituents do.
When Senator Sherrod Brown was running for a seat in the House of Representatives over 10 years ago, he saw something wrong with this. He pledged not to accept his free government health care until everyone in the United States had the same luxury. (He’s still waiting.)
Brown reasoned that politicians should have the same privileges as those they represent. I know a lot of the Democrats running for President understand this principle. Monday night during their YouTube debate, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson all pledged to work for the minimum wage should they be elected president — to show that they’re in touch with the plight of everyday Americans, and to make sure they are personally invested in making sure the minimum wage in this country is a livable one. Good for them.
Now, candidates, how about giving up your health care too? If elected president, you and your family will be entitled to free government health care, courtesy of the fine doctors at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. But nearly 50 million of your constituents will go without any medical care at all — and 18,000 of them will die during your first year in office simply because they lack health insurance. As the head of the government, how can you take advantage of its health care services, but deny it to so many citizens?
I am calling on each presidential candidate to pledge to refuse their free government health care until every person in this country also has it. I want every candidate who said they’d work for the minimum wage as president to work uninsured, too, until health care is universal. And I want the other candidates to join them. (Yes, I’m looking at you, too, Republicans. I know you can afford to do it.)
During Monday night’s interactive debate, I submitted this exact challenge on YouTube, just like everyone else. CNN didn’t choose it — maybe Dr. Gupta was making the selections? Anyway, I am issuing it here. All candidates should pledge to take whatever health care is available to the least fortunate American. Right now, that’s nothing. Hopefully as president, they’ll have to make it something.
Michael Moore’s newest film, SiCKO, is now in theaters nationwide.
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
________________________________________________________
Published on Thursday, July 26, 2007 by Huffington Post
My Challenge to the Presidential Candidates
by Michael Moore
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/26/2776
The American government isn’t afraid to hand out free health care. Senior citizens get it. Veterans get it. As SiCKO shows you, even the detainees at Guantanamo Bay get it.
So, too, do our federal elected officials. It doesn’t matter if they are Republicans or Democrats, young or old, healthy or sick — they are entitled to free, government-provided health insurance. They don’t have to worry about being able to pay for medical help — even if many of their constituents do.
When Senator Sherrod Brown was running for a seat in the House of Representatives over 10 years ago, he saw something wrong with this. He pledged not to accept his free government health care until everyone in the United States had the same luxury. (He’s still waiting.)
Brown reasoned that politicians should have the same privileges as those they represent. I know a lot of the Democrats running for President understand this principle. Monday night during their YouTube debate, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson all pledged to work for the minimum wage should they be elected president — to show that they’re in touch with the plight of everyday Americans, and to make sure they are personally invested in making sure the minimum wage in this country is a livable one. Good for them.
Now, candidates, how about giving up your health care too? If elected president, you and your family will be entitled to free government health care, courtesy of the fine doctors at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. But nearly 50 million of your constituents will go without any medical care at all — and 18,000 of them will die during your first year in office simply because they lack health insurance. As the head of the government, how can you take advantage of its health care services, but deny it to so many citizens?
I am calling on each presidential candidate to pledge to refuse their free government health care until every person in this country also has it. I want every candidate who said they’d work for the minimum wage as president to work uninsured, too, until health care is universal. And I want the other candidates to join them. (Yes, I’m looking at you, too, Republicans. I know you can afford to do it.)
During Monday night’s interactive debate, I submitted this exact challenge on YouTube, just like everyone else. CNN didn’t choose it — maybe Dr. Gupta was making the selections? Anyway, I am issuing it here. All candidates should pledge to take whatever health care is available to the least fortunate American. Right now, that’s nothing. Hopefully as president, they’ll have to make it something.
Michael Moore’s newest film, SiCKO, is now in theaters nationwide.
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
Children’s Healthcare Is a No-Brainer by Amy Goodman
If you are unfamiliar with Amy Goodman, she's one of the very few REAL (read: OBJECTIVE!) JOURNALISTS LEFT! Wow, what a concept...you hear me Fox "News" scumbags?! What's that y'all say, ratings in the shitter?! B-O-O H-O-O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Published on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 by TruthDig.com
Children’s Healthcare Is a No-Brainer
by Amy Goodman
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/25/2755
Deamonte Driver had a toothache. He was 12 years old. He had no insurance, and his mother couldn’t afford the $80 to have the decayed tooth removed. He might have gotten it taken care of through Medicaid, but his mother couldn’t find a dentist who accepted the low reimbursements. Instead, Deamonte got some minimal attention from an emergency room, his condition worsened and he died. Deamonte was one of 9 million children in the U.S. without health insurance.
Congress is considering bipartisan legislation that will cover poor children in the U.S.
The major obstacle? President Bush is vowing to veto the bill, even though Republican and Democratic senators reached bipartisan agreement on it. The bill adds $35 billion to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program over the next five years by increasing federal taxes on cigarettes.
The conservative Heritage Foundation is against the tobacco tax to fund SCHIP, saying that it “disproportionately burdens low-income smokers” as well as “young adults.” No mention is made of any adverse impact on Heritage-funder Altria Group, the cigarette giant formerly known as Philip Morris.
According to the American Association for Respiratory Care, with every 10 percent rise in the cigarette tax, youth smoking drops by 7 percent and overall smoking declines by 4 percent. Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, says: “It is a public health good in and of itself and will save lives to increase the tobacco tax. Cigarettes kill and cigarettes provoke lung cancer, and every child and every [other] human being we can, by increasing the cigarette tax, stop from smoking or slow down from smoking is going to have a public health benefit, save taxpayers money from the cost of the effects of smoking and tobacco.”
Two programs serve as the health safety net for poor and working-class children: Medicaid and SCHIP (pronounced “s-chip”). SCHIP is a federal grant program that allows states to provide health coverage to children who belong to working families earning too much to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to afford private health insurance when their employers do not provide it. It’s the SCHIP funding that is now being debated in Congress.
The Children’s Defense Fund has published scores of stories similar to Deamonte’s. Children like Devante Johnson of Houston. At 13, Devante was fighting advanced kidney cancer. His mother tried to renew his Medicaid coverage, but bureaucratic red tape tied up the process. By the time Devante got access to the care he needed, his fate was sealed. He died at the age of 14, in Bush’s home state, only miles from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, one of the world’s leading cancer treatment and research facilities.
With children’s lives at stake, Edelman has no patience for political gamesmanship: “Why is this country, at this time, the richest in the world, arguing about how few or how many children they can serve? We ought to-this is a no-brainer. The American people want all of its children served. All children deserve health coverage, and I don’t know why we’re having such a hard time getting our president and our political leaders to get it, that children should have health insurance.”
Republican Sen. Gordon Smith originally introduced the SCHIP budget resolution in the Senate. Unlike Bush, who is not up for re-election, Smith is defending his vulnerable Senate seat in 2008, in the blue state of Oregon. He, like other Republicans who are breaking with Bush on the war in Iraq, is sensitive to Bush’s domestic policies. Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families just released a poll that says 91 percent of Americans support the expansion of SCHIP to cover more kids.
And the American people are willing to go much further. As demonstrated by the popularity of Michael Moore’s latest blockbuster, “SiCKO,” the public, across the political spectrum, is ready to fix the U.S. healthcare system. How many more children like Deamonte and Devante have to die before the politicians, all with great health insurance themselves, take action?
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.
© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate
_________________________________________________________
Published on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 by TruthDig.com
Children’s Healthcare Is a No-Brainer
by Amy Goodman
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/25/2755
Deamonte Driver had a toothache. He was 12 years old. He had no insurance, and his mother couldn’t afford the $80 to have the decayed tooth removed. He might have gotten it taken care of through Medicaid, but his mother couldn’t find a dentist who accepted the low reimbursements. Instead, Deamonte got some minimal attention from an emergency room, his condition worsened and he died. Deamonte was one of 9 million children in the U.S. without health insurance.
Congress is considering bipartisan legislation that will cover poor children in the U.S.
The major obstacle? President Bush is vowing to veto the bill, even though Republican and Democratic senators reached bipartisan agreement on it. The bill adds $35 billion to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program over the next five years by increasing federal taxes on cigarettes.
The conservative Heritage Foundation is against the tobacco tax to fund SCHIP, saying that it “disproportionately burdens low-income smokers” as well as “young adults.” No mention is made of any adverse impact on Heritage-funder Altria Group, the cigarette giant formerly known as Philip Morris.
According to the American Association for Respiratory Care, with every 10 percent rise in the cigarette tax, youth smoking drops by 7 percent and overall smoking declines by 4 percent. Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, says: “It is a public health good in and of itself and will save lives to increase the tobacco tax. Cigarettes kill and cigarettes provoke lung cancer, and every child and every [other] human being we can, by increasing the cigarette tax, stop from smoking or slow down from smoking is going to have a public health benefit, save taxpayers money from the cost of the effects of smoking and tobacco.”
Two programs serve as the health safety net for poor and working-class children: Medicaid and SCHIP (pronounced “s-chip”). SCHIP is a federal grant program that allows states to provide health coverage to children who belong to working families earning too much to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to afford private health insurance when their employers do not provide it. It’s the SCHIP funding that is now being debated in Congress.
The Children’s Defense Fund has published scores of stories similar to Deamonte’s. Children like Devante Johnson of Houston. At 13, Devante was fighting advanced kidney cancer. His mother tried to renew his Medicaid coverage, but bureaucratic red tape tied up the process. By the time Devante got access to the care he needed, his fate was sealed. He died at the age of 14, in Bush’s home state, only miles from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, one of the world’s leading cancer treatment and research facilities.
With children’s lives at stake, Edelman has no patience for political gamesmanship: “Why is this country, at this time, the richest in the world, arguing about how few or how many children they can serve? We ought to-this is a no-brainer. The American people want all of its children served. All children deserve health coverage, and I don’t know why we’re having such a hard time getting our president and our political leaders to get it, that children should have health insurance.”
Republican Sen. Gordon Smith originally introduced the SCHIP budget resolution in the Senate. Unlike Bush, who is not up for re-election, Smith is defending his vulnerable Senate seat in 2008, in the blue state of Oregon. He, like other Republicans who are breaking with Bush on the war in Iraq, is sensitive to Bush’s domestic policies. Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families just released a poll that says 91 percent of Americans support the expansion of SCHIP to cover more kids.
And the American people are willing to go much further. As demonstrated by the popularity of Michael Moore’s latest blockbuster, “SiCKO,” the public, across the political spectrum, is ready to fix the U.S. healthcare system. How many more children like Deamonte and Devante have to die before the politicians, all with great health insurance themselves, take action?
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.
© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate
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