SCHIP Shape

Framer at Arizona8th has an excellent post last night concerning the SCHIP debate, and I wanted to respond to it.

As to the question of using children in advertising, both parties have done so in the past when they felt it would help make their point, and both parties will continue to do so in the future. However, Framer actually missed the point of having the Frost and Wilkerson families in the ads.

As Framer correctly notes, both the Frosts and the Wilkersons qualify under the current SCHIP standards. However, the point of using both families in the ads was the original funding increase proposed by the President was not sufficient to even maintain coverage for all children currently in the program - an estimated 700,000 current participants would have been cut. The Frosts and the Wilkersons have legitimate concerns they might lose the benefits if the proposed bill is not passed.

Framer also points to a poll indicating a majority feel most of the benefits should go to families with income leves less than 200% of the poverty level -- and hey, what do you know, they would under the proposed bill!

The Congressional Budget Office notes 84% of the 3.8 million otherwise uninsured children who would gain insurance under the program qualify under current state standards, with "a large share" living under the poverty line.

Further, while lower-income families do not pay premiums within the program, those with incomes closer to the program limit do pay some form of monthly premium, helping insure those who need the most help get the most help.

Framer also has issues with the funding mechanism, and here I partly agree with him. I am not opposed to higher cigarette taxes - if it helps encourage people to stop smoking that is just an ancillary benefit in my mind. However, I would like to see some other form or forms of funding involved as well, so that it's not entirely based on cigarette taxes.

Finally, Framer accuses Democrats of addressing the issue emotionally ... and again he has a point ... but to which I say yeah, Democrats are going to continue to pound Republicans over SCHIP emotionally as well. Remember all those (logic-laden, unemotional I am sure) "you don't support the troops" charges levied for years at liberal lawmakers? Consider "you don't support the children" a response to that.

I realize it's petty, but it's nice to let conservative lawmakers have a taste of their own medicine for a change. It's even nicer when one is on the better side of the argument both emotionally and from a policy standpoint.

A slightly unrelated point - Framer is careful to not call the vetoed bill "bi-partisan", instead quoting an article which refers to it as "the bill written by Democrats and some Republicans would allow".

There have been a number of votes in which every Republican + Joe Lieberman voted one way, and every other Democrat voted the other way, and the administration has never hesitated to use that one vote to apply the label "bi-partisan". A lot more than one Republican voted in favor of this bi-partisan bill, and the longer the minority continue to block it, the more it's going to hurt in 2008.

Money matters

For some reason there has been a lot of griping about Tim Bee not resigning his position to run in CD 8 ... griping I don't understand. If Bee feels he can run a credible, substantive race while also retaining his influential seat in the Arizona Senate, more power to him -- as blogger ThinkRight regularly notes, it may be a long, long time before a Baja Arizonan leads the Senate again.

As long as Bee files financial reports, I don't see how his remaining in the Senate can hurt anyone else in the race, most notably Democratic incumbent Gabrielle Giffords. If anything, the extra demands on Bee's time can only help her.

Well, the reports are out. The Star has an article this morning discussing AZ 8 fund-raising figures for both Giffords and Bee, and x4mr already has a post up about the matter. The early scoreboard shows Giffords raising $250K last quarter, with $1.1 million tucker away, while Bee raised $135K, with $120K on hand.

A pair of posters have already (as I write this) thrown in their $.02, with ThinkRight opining Bee's early fund-raising figures are quit good for an exploratory campaign, while Roger feels the figure is disappointing for the Bee camp.

Count me firmly on Roger's side of the debate.

Calling Bee's campaign "exploratory" is sophistry at its finest. Everyone knows Bee will run, and any claims from his staff to the contrary are purely to allow Bee to retain his position as head of the state Senate for as long as possible. Being "exploratory" didn't hurt or help his fundraising in any way, shape, form or fashion.

Bee did suffer from some handicaps, in that his campaign was just getting underway as the quarter began. However, if memory serves the comittee was formed in June, meaning Bee had the entire quarter to raise money.

Furthermore, the first quarter of fundraising is the "easy" quarter. This is the money you get from all your friends, contacts, business associates, etc., the money you use to build the foundation of your campaign organization. From this point on, raising money only gets harder. For a comparison, in her first quarter of fundraising, a period in which she only had five weeks (having declared in late Nov. 2005), Giffords raised over $250K.

Another comparison - the $250K Giffords raised last month was, by far, her worst quarter of the year. You can expect to see that figure kick up again as 2008 turns the quarter. At this time last campaign Giffords was six weeks from even declaring ... she went on to raise $2.5 million for the race.

Bee and his campaign will never admit it ... but if I were a betting man I would lay a lot of money that yes, they are very disappointed with their initial fundraising efforts. If they hope to unseat Giffords, they are going to have to do better.

Correction: ThinkRight, in comments, notes the Bee exploratory committee did not officially kick off until late Aug. As such, fundraising efforts only cover the last five weeks of the quarter.

It doesn't change my opinion the amount raised remains disappointing, both for reasons noted above and in the comment thread, but it does attenuate it good bit.

Are we done yet?

The Washington Post has a story today about a debate within the army and the administration over declaring "victory" against al-Qaeda in Iraq. The consensus seems to be AQI has taken some heavy hits in recent months, severely damaging its capacity for terror operations, and some folks want a public declaration to the effect, while others, having seen similar "Mission Accomplished" and "Last Throes" statements turn out poorly in the past, are taking a more cautious view.

Of course, there is another reason to not declare victory as well, which the article mentions but I am going to discuss here anyway ...

It's unquestionably a good thing that AQI has been significantly reduced in effectiveness by our recent operations there. Hopefully the pressure on the organization really has cracked it, to the point of being irrecoverable. If so, however, it raises two points in my mind:


1. What, exactly, does it say about our occupation that "declaring victory" over a terrorist organization in Iraq which never existed prior to our occupation is seen as a sign of progress and optimism? I mean, AQI only ever came about in the first place because we decided to invade Iraq. No invasion, no terrorists.

It's like saying "this was an offshoot of our bad planning and poor decision-making, but we've mostly fixed the direct problem (although it's true a multitude of other, related problems still exist), so lets declare victory. Huzzah!"


2. As the article notes, one reason given for not declaring victory is if there are no terrorists left it opens up the question of why we still need troops there. I.e., if it's not the terrorists doing all the shooting and killing and bombing, aren't our troops just trying to referee a civil war?

Of course, it has been true for a considerable time the vast majority of violence perpetrated in Iraq has had nothing whatsoever to do with AQI or any other recognized terrorist organization, and has had everything to do with factional conflicts within Iraq. This can't be admitted, however, or what little public support still remains for keeping our troops over there would collapse even further.



It's all a pipe-dream. The chances our troops are going to exit Iraq within the next two years is roughly the same as our cars being pooped on by dive-bombing pigs. Endless rationalizations for the war follow the same life-cycle: creation, promotion, prove to be false, discard in favor of yet another rationalization ... and the cycle of death continues unabated.

Maybe kids ARE better off without insurance

A new study has been released with some startling conclusions -- even when children do have insurance and see doctors, the quality of care they receive is quite poor, particularly in regards to preventative care.

Now the President and all those shrieking right-wing bloggers who have been stalking the Frost family to the point even Time magazine has noticed have another reason to support their misguided case against expanding the SCHIP program - they are trying to save them from poor medical care.

As various sites have noted, Malkin herself was singing another tune a few years ago when she found her family in a situation similar to what the Frost's are in now (minus the two handicapped children within the Frost household).

Digby responds:

"Apparently, that's not enough. Malkin and her husband are lucky enough to qualify for wingnut welfare and have healthy children. Bully for them. They got theirs and are now railing against the "choices" made by two working parents who make 45,000 a year. But I think she and her stalker squad are going to be surprised to find that most people don't see things their way --- this smug judgmentalism and rank callousness is not the American way. That's not what freedom is all about."

There remains the open question as to whether or not the entire anti-Frost campaign was originally orchestrated from the offices of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ... although the email mistakenly sent to a Democratic staffer sure seems like compelling evidence.

Conservatives are in a losing position on health care, and somewhere, deep in what remains of their hearts, they know this, so they respond in their usual, time-tested manner - yell louder, smear the messenger and ignore inconvenient details which conflict with their made-up reality. By now, it's a Pavlovian reflex.

Well, she's right in one instance at least

Ann Coulter is flogging a new book, and in doing so did an interview with the New York Observer, some snippets of which are available here.

Coulter of course is known for her outrageous statements, but one really leaps out at me.

"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.

It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and 'We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care -- and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?' "

One can, of course, turn this around and ask why the Republican party has so much difficulty getting women to vote for it, and I am sure there a joke just waiting to made there about Coulter's own gender and voting propensities, but I'll leave that to the pros.

Really, though, the statement is a good, brief summation of what values are important to Republicans, or to leading Republican pundits at least - and apparently issues like health care and education don't make the list because they aren't "manly" enough.

No, no, all that seems to matter is the seemingly endless capacity to demand more war, more military spending, more death, destruction and devastation without any apparent plan for actually bringing things to an end. Oh, you'll hear platitudes - "we'll make things safe for Democracy", or "War on Terrorism" or whatever, but any set of actual, realistic, measurable metrics which would denote final success or failure ... not so much.

Heck, even when such metrics are set, then found to not be met, the results are simply ignored. Witness the events of last month.

If I had to choose between providing funding for health care, tuition and day care for working mothers, or funding for the continued armed occupation of a nation which had nothing to do with terrorism before we invaded it, I'll take the former, thanks ... if that places me in "the party of women", I can live with that.

It's better than being in the party of corrupt, fear-mongering, war-mongering, minority-bashing, gay-bashing, mostly white men ... and Ann Coulter.

I don't know if women in general, or even single women in general, are voting stupidly ... but I do know one specific single woman who is.

Some interrelated data

The NYTimes has an article today describing what it has found concerning the now infamous Blackwater incident last week in Baghdad. The article goes out of its way to point out not all information is known, but the information which is known, largely from eyewitnesses, paints a pretty damning picture.

This is the latest of a number of incidents involving Blackwater, and has sparked a number of investigations, both in Iraq and the United States. One big issue has been the sheer number of mercenaries our government employs in Iraq. An idea can be gained by looking at how rapidly Blackwater's government contracts have escalated: from roughly $750K in 2001 to over $600 million last year.

That's a lot of soldiers, outside any formal chain of command, costing up to six times what a member of the US military does ... and at the same time lets the government get away with claiming we "only" have around 150K troops in Iraq, instead of the 300K plus actually there.

Meanwhile, as Liza points out in a comment here, things are looking up in Basra:

"BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Residents of Iraq's southern city of Basra have begun strolling riverfront streets again after four years of fear, their city much quieter since British troops withdrew from the grand Saddam Hussein-era Basra Palace.

Political assassinations and sectarian violence continue, some city officials say, but on a much smaller scale than at any time since British troops moved into the city after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

...

"The situation these days is better. We were living in hell ... the area is calm since their withdrawal," said housewife Khairiya Salman, who lives near the palace."

This ties in nicely with Iraqi opinions about the surge and the US presence in Iraq. As this BBC article notes, 70% of Iraqis polled last month think the surge has failed, roughly 60% think attacks on US forces are justified, and a plurality, 47%, want US forces to leave Iraq immediately (Lets not even mention the majority of Americans who want the same thing).

Of course, all those defeatists hadn't seen last months casualty numbers when the poll was ocnducted - I am sure their views are very different now, and most of them are singing Hosannahs for the US troops, and writing poetic odes lauding the occupation.

Meanwhile, our elected leaders are condemning newspaper ads and arguing over whether Rush Limbaugh should be scorned or hailed for his remarks concerning "phony" soldiers. Hopefully House Appropriations Committee chair Dave Obey will stick to his guns ... maybe something will actually get done.

A good month in Iraq

I've spent much of the summer making posts, both on this blog and in comments at other forums, about the ineffectiveness of the "surge" in limiting casualties both among American troops and Iraqis. Therefore, it is only fair I point out this past month bucks the trend.

There were only 64 US soldiers killed in September, the lowest monthly figure in 14 months, and the first time this year a given month had fewer US soldier fatalities than the same month the prior year (by comparison, 72 US soldiers were killed in Sept. 2006).

Meanwhile, the initial figures for Iraqi civilian deaths in September is 922, a more than 50% decline from August, and the lowest figure in 15 months.

Before the "see, the surge is working!" brigades get going full force, however, there are several things I would like to point out:

* In Sept. 2005 there was a relatively low number of US fatalities (49 in Sept. 2005, compared to 85 in Aug. 2005). There were some comments then about "turning the corner". We all know how that turned out.

* Regardless of how many or how few casualties there may have been, it remains true on the political front there has been no further progress. Without political resolution, events in Iraq can not be termed a success.

Given we've had single-month periods like this before, I'll give it some more time before declaring a trend is in progress. Call me back in two months if casualty counts continue to decline. If they do, though, that much-vaunted "breathing-space" the surge is supposed to be creating may actually come into existence.