Michelle jokingly said Barack would be sleeping on the couch if he didn't push the child nutrition bill through Congress. (CC BY/glyphobet/Flickr)

After passing unanimously through the Senate last summer and more narrowly through the House (264-157) earlier this month, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 has finally received the president’s signature. The new law authorizes a federal nutrition program for children, reports the Associated Press. The $4.5-billion measure extends school lunch assistance to the needy, sets federal nutritional standards for all food in schools and will mandate programs to combat childhood obesity and related diseases.

Some say child nutrition bill smacks of socialism

Critics of the child nutrition bill object to the federal government determining what foods are healthy for children, believing that parents should make that decision. However, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act is exceedingly popular in Washington, D.C., particularly with First Lady Michelle Obama. Child nutrition and exercise have been big talking points for Michelle Obama, and she has pushed the cause fervently with the president both in public and in private.

Publicly, President Obama spoke of the child nutrition bill as being “an act about doing what is right for children,” and he praised the bill as being a rare example of strong bipartisan cooperation.

Avoiding the couch

While First Lady Michelle Obama offered serious praise for the child nutrition bill passed during a presentation at Washington D.C.’s Harriett Tubman Elementary School, she also jokingly suggested that if the president had not taken the bill seriously, “he would have been sleeping on the couch.”

Lapsing back into serious discourse, Michelle Obama told the students, teachers and media gathered at the presentation of the new law that the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was a fundamental need for U.S. children.

“Nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our children. Nothing,” said Michelle Obama.

Taking from Peter to pay Paul

President Obama confirmed that the child nutrition bill will increase spending on school lunches by approximately 6 cents per child. In order to fund this increase, the president said that cuts were made to the national food stamp program. While he did offer that he is currently working with Congress to find a way to restore what was cut, this method of funding has raised some eyebrows.

Sources

Associated Press

WhiteHouse.gov

President Obama on the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010

Is there room in the market for another print publication? Image from Flikr.com.

Did I just read this New York Times commentary correctly? It says a new quarterly magazine called National Affairs started yesterday (Monday). David Brooks says that National Affairs magazine is meant to continue the work of The Public Interest, a magazine that shut down in 2005.

Brooks writes that National Affairs magazine aims to occupy “the bloody crossroads where social science and public policy meet matters of morality, culture and virtue.” Whew, I am glad they are not in this to make money. The newspaper, magazine and general printed publication industry has been steadily tanking for years — that is, until the recession began, when it took a sharp nosedive.

The one that came before

Apparently mortgage loan restructuring was not an option for The Public Interest, which lasted 40 years, from 1965 to 2005. The Public Interest Closed when the last of the original editors retired. Brooks writes:

Their idea was that the great ideological clashes between socialism and capitalism were in the past. In the age of consensus what was needed was a policy journal that would pragmatically weigh costs and benefits.

It really is a lovely, peaceful idea. Unfortunately, I think humans have shown that they will always be politically polarized. Politicians will always use disdain for the opposing party as a unifying element. But the people running National Affairs magazine have more faith than I do, apparently.

What is at this crossroads?

According to Brooks, the first essay in National Affairs magazine focuses on how we can tackle the recession. Brooks writes:

Creating a new and sustainable middle-class social contract isn’t only an accounting matter. It’s also a question of responsibility.

He says this essay states that the nation’s leaders have made a series of “lavishly unaffordable promises.” Brooks also points out the flaw in logic behind the first essay in National Affairs magazine. The essay says the nation’s leaders should skip special interests and hand power directly to the people. However, Brooks points out this strategy was implemented in California, and now that state’s budget is a total disaster.

Thoughts on National Affairs magazine

With newspapers and magazines shutting down at alarming rates, I think it’s a very bold move for editor Yuval Levin and his colleagues to give National Affairs magazine a shot. Perhaps they should get one of those motivational posters that says “you never fail until you stop trying.”

After all, its predecessor, The Public Interest, didn’t seem to make a whole lot of progress in shaping public policy. In its 20th anniversary edition, James Q. Wilson wrote:

At root, in almost every area of public concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as schoolchildren, applicants to public assistance, would-be lawbreakers, or voters and public officials.

Is there no way to control spending?

Brooks points out that we’re not at a point, as a country, where we can decide whether we should control spending, we must decide how to control spending. After explaining all of the catastrophes that resulted from direct democracy in California, Brooks says concentrating power among public-policy professionals doesn’t work either.

So what’s the answer, Mr. Brooks? Apparently, he says, National Affairs magazine’s job is to figure this out. Good luck!

(Photo: flickr.com)

Stop the presses. There is a connection between the racist, inflammatory Obama Joker socialism posters used to protest the president’s plans for the necessary overhaul of the health care system and the lost presidential candidacy of Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich. I rather liked the man and would have voted for him if he’d stuck around, but he’s wistful and thinks outside the box. Apparently that makes him an easy target for being labeled “crazy” or “unbalanced,” which is an unjust spin game in itself. As I see it, any politician who would propose the Baseball Fan Protection Act has interesting things to say. Unfortunately he supports squeezing legitimate lenders of payday loans and installment loans via “tightening up” the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), but nobody’s perfect.

First the Obama Joker poster

According to the Examiner, the poster was created by a 20-year-old college student from Chicago, Firas Alkhateeb. He is of Palestinian decent and – interestingly enough – is rather liberal in his politics. But here’s the Dennis Kucinich connection: Alkhateeb says he would have preferred him to Obama. As time goes on, I begin to agree.

“After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ,” he said. “From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him.”

Which is the same problem I have

The more Obama talks, the more it seems that he’s a promise maker with less drive to make those promises a reality. How can he let the single-payer option go, claiming it is “not the most important thing?” It’s ridiculous. Plus, his recent stance on the Defense of Marriage Act flies in the face of his support for gay and lesbian couples. And what about the wars in the Middle East? Shouldn’t we be close to withdrawing from that quagmire by now?

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Alkhateeb is frustrated with Obama, as are many others. That’s why he fired up Photoshop and made a Joker out of the president. Then he posted it to his Flickr page. At that point, someone else unrevealed stole the work and gave it the socialism tag. In Alkhateeb’s assessment (and mine), that’s an “immature” take on what Obama is trying to accomplish with health care reform. But it’s a convenient buzz word that the right can use to frighten the uninformed masses.

So who is Dennis Kucinich?

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio’s 10^th District has been praised by Ralph Nader as being a “genuine progressive.” He firmly is in support of a single-payer health care system, one for which all Americans have a right to qualify for care. Like President Obama, he recognizes that the current system in place works for only a minority of consumers and a majority of large insurance corporations. As there are far too many who lack coverage altogether and costs continue to rise as corporate greed goes unchecked and Medicare fraud continues to run rampant, Dennis Kucinich is one of those who believe that Americans deserve something he likes to call “Medicare For All.”

Medicare for All

Kucinich, along with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), introduced Medicare For All as HR 676. This bill would provide citizens necessary care at a high standard of quality, as well as free choice of provider. There would be no co-payments, premiums or deductibles.

Where would the money come from?

Because we know it doesn’t grow on trees. Customers of payday loans and installment loans know this all too well. Funds come from a variety of sources, according to Dennis Kucinich. From Congressman Kucinich’s Web site, they are as follows:

• Savings from a vast reduction of paperwork
• Existing government spending on healthcare
• Savings from rational bulk procurement of medications
• Tax on the top 5 percent of income earners
• A small tax on stock and bond transfers
• A phased-in payroll tax that is less than what employers currently pay on average for less complete employee health coverage

How has this bill been doing?

Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich (Photo: commons.wikimedia.org)

HR 676 (aka the Conyers/Kucinich bill) “is the signature national health insurance bill currently before Congress,” according to Kucinich’s Web site. The number of political co-sponsors is growing, and there are at least 14,000 physicians and several thousand more nurses who support the measure. Its supporters include 14,000 physicians, several thousand nurses and many others. When Congress considered the most recent national budget resolution, Medicare For All was included among those bills that made up the Progressive Caucus’ “Alternative Budget” resolution. It is very real and could become the driving force behind real health care reform.

Unpopular decisions? He’d make them and make them work

That’s what I think. Check out Dennis Kucinich and see what you think. I have to hand it to him, however. After marrying someone like Elizabeth, surely he could become the President of the United States (see the video). Perhaps she has a soft spot for payday loans and installment loans on the legitimate side of the TILA blind.

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Apparently, this is what the healthcare industry does in its spare time (Photo: bedlammagazine.com)

If you live in Los Angeles, you may have seen them already. If you surf the World Wide Web for your news, you’ve likely seen it by now. It’s the Obama Joker poster, seen here. Many people will think this is funny; personally, I don’t find illiteracy and a general lack of reading comprehension to be humorous.

If you’ve seen Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” you know that the Joker’s platform was one of anarchy. He simply wanted to sit back and watch the world burn, as Alfred Pennyworth puts it. He’d sooner set fire to a mountain of money instead of distributing the wealth, simply because he can. Money means little to him, or just as much as a hammer and nails would to someone with a home repair job to do. For normal people, no fax payday loans and cash advances serve a purpose. I do not advocate burning them.

Socialism isn’t anarchy

Governance is order, even if we’re referring to self-government or something else along the lines of libertarianism. The Joker relishes disorder, particularly the pain and confusion it can cause. If the most beneficial type of socialism is geared to keep the most harmful elements of human behavior in check for the good of the whole, then we can easily see that the Joker is not a socialist. He hungers eternally for maximum damage.

No joke – change is needed

A writer for the Examiner wonders where this Obama Joker poster came from. It’s been appearing on freeway off-ramps and underpasses in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. Some are outraged, others are simply confused (which the Joker would have loved), but what seems quite clear is that this is a protest against President Obama’s movement toward universal health care for Americans.

In general, Obama’s wants health coverage for the uninsured while keeping health care spending in check.

Preparing to battle the misinformation

Sheryl Stolberg and David Herszenhorn report for the New York Times that Obama and Democrats in Congress are entrenching themselves for a major offensive against the campaign of anti-health care reform misinformation. Clearly the machine is broken when it comes to the greatest number of people having adequate or affordable coverage in America, so change is necessary. Yet those who oppose Obama’s plans of late offer little to nothing in the way of change. Or at best, they would suggest stopgap reforms to health insurance while laying off the necessary reform to the health care industry as a whole. Why? Because health insurance companies have deep pockets!

If you need to fill your pockets, no fax payday loans and cash advances are available. Apply here today!

Check your humanity at the door, GOP!

Obama, says the NY Times, wants to make it clear that attacking the entire diseased system will “protect consumers by ending unpopular insurance industry practices, like refusing patients with pre-existing conditions.” Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod says that the president wants to convey that “this is going to give people who have insurance a degree of security and stability, the protection that they don’t have today against the sort of mercurial judgments of insurance bureaucrats.”

Republicans say this will be too expensive to institute, but how do they suggest change without expense? Perhaps they think no change is better, as families continue to suffer? I hope the insurance giants are paying the Republicans well to abandon their humanity.

Inciting to riot, which is in fact a felony

Large health insurance industry trade groups like America’s Health Insurance Plans are calling for sheeple to “confront Democrats at public meetings,” for the sheer purpose of distraction. No healthy debate, just sent people in to make noise and cause a ruckus. I’d hitch my star to such idiocy any day! Seriously, no.

America needs civil conversation. But that conversation needs to be based on fact rather than innuendo. Republicans are mobilizing, attempting to argue that quality of care will go down while costs will skyrocket. Republican Representative Mike Pence of Indiana claims that Obama’s proposed coverage will include “more than $800 billion in new tax hikes” and offer up “harmful cuts” to Medicare. That’s a big one that health insurance industry Republican cronies are using to scare the aging baby boomers. Yet how do those claims gel with the Health Insurance Consumer Protections the White House is promising? They don’t. Somebody’s lying to you here with trumped up statistics.

Speaking of trumped up statistics, consider the source

The status quo is not good enough. It never was. (Photo: southernstudies.org)

There are polls somewhere that indicate that the American public is “growing uneasy” with the debate over reforming health care. A recent New York Times/CBS News survey indicates that Obama still has support, but it is waning somewhat. No doubt the Republican scare campaigns and Obama Joker posters have something to do with that. But let’s consider the discussion in the video below.

Republicans who site statistics that supposedly prove that Obama’s plan will backfire appear to cite the same source each time for their information: the Lewin Group. This is supposedly an independent think tank, but the truth is that the Lewin Group is in fact funded by UnitedHealth Group – one of America’s largest health insurers. Talk about maintaining the status quo! Here’s a tidbit about UnitedHealth Group, courtesy of the Washington Post. It has to do with data used to determine how much (or in this case how little) consumers are reimbursed for out-of-network care:

In January, UnitedHealth agreed to a $50 million settlement with the New York attorney general and a $350 million settlement with the AMA, covering conduct going back as far as 1994.

Settlements and payment of this nature don’t typically burden honesty companies. Republicans, do you seriously want to take your information against Obama’s health care plan from a convicted wrongdoer – from the belly of the beast?

Anti-health care reform Republicans are the real jokers here

And I mean that in the most sickeningly hyper-capitalist way possible. Massive profit, minimal payout – the way of America’s health insurers – was never good enough for America. Now that we have the opportunity to institute change, people make Obama joker posters. Striking idea in clown makeup, but you misunderstand the concept of socialism, the concept of anarchy – and you simply waste the time of people who have brains and know how to use them.

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