Alan Grayson Blasts Tea Party Debate Audience's Reaction To Health Care Question: 'It's Sadism'
9/12/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/alan-grayson-tea-party-debate-health-care_n_959383.html
The jubilant shouts of members of the GOP audience encouraging the death of a hypothetical uninsured man bring to mind the 2009 House floor speech delivered by former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, in which he famously charged: "The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick." Members of the crowd at the Tampa debate agree with Grayson.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer, the event's moderator, posed the hypothetical question to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas): What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn't have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? "Are you saying society should just let him die?" Wolf Blitzer asked.
"Yeah!" several members of the crowd yelled out.
HuffPost asked Grayson what he thought of the crowd cheering for the death of the uninsured man. He writes:
My speech was about the fact I had been listening to the Republicans for months, and they literally had no plan to help all those millions of people who can’t see a doctor when they’re sick. So I said, in sort of a wry manner, that their plan was "don’t get sick." All I really wanted to do was just call attention to the stark absence of a Republican plan. But Fox, trying to take the heat off Joe Wilson and Sarah Palin I guess, transmogrified that into a charge that Republicans want to kill people.
What you saw tonight is something much more sinister than not having a healthcare plan. It's sadism, pure and simple. It's the same impulse that led people in the Coliseum to cheer when the lions ate the Christians. And that seems to be where we are heading -- bread and circuses, without the bread. The world that Hobbes wrote about -- "the war of all against all."
|
|
|---|
|
|
|---|
Showing posts with label Alan Grayson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Grayson. Show all posts
Saturday, September 17, 2011
My 10-Year-Old's Jobs Program
Thu, 8 Sep 2011
Alan Grayson
alangrayson@graysonforcongress.com
I like to help my children with their homework, whenever I have time. (And since January, I’ve had more time.) It’s great to help them – I know all the answers, and I never have to take the exams.
Last night, we tried something different. They helped me with my homework. A math problem:
“We are spending $159,000,000,000.00 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. If we ended the wars, brought the troops home, took that money, and created decent jobs paying $30,000 apiece in the United States, then how many jobs would we create?”
Skye, the 16-year-old, took out her phone, clicked on the calculator app, and gave the answer:
“5,300,000 jobs.”
Correct.
I asked the 12-year-old, Star, and the 10-year-old, Sage. Both gave me the right answer:
“5,300,000 jobs.”
Then I asked the 6-year-old twins, Storm and Stone. Storm said “thirty hundred and five.” Stone agreed.
OK, so we have a jobs program that a 10-year-old can understand. But, admittedly, not a six-year-old.
And what would that jobs program do to the unemployment rate? The math is a little more complicated, but the answer is that it would drop the unemployment rate from 9 percent to 5.5 percent. Immediately.
It’s actually better than that, because money that is spent hiring Americans, in America, then circulates in America. Economists tell us that every new job like that creates as many as five other jobs – the employee then pays his rent, the landlord then goes to the restaurant, the waiter then gets his hair cut, and so on. Unemployment, goodbye.
As opposed to spending our money in Iraq, on Iraq. Have you ever been in the desert when it rains? The water runs through the sand so fast that 15 minutes after the rain is over, it’s as though it never rained at all.
That’s what happens to our tax dollars spent in Iraq. The term “bottomless pit” is an understatement.
And what would all those employees do? Well, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky has figured that out. She has introduced a bill to hire 2.2 million people, and her bill breaks down this way:
The School Improvement Corps would create 400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs by funding positions created by public school districts to do needed school rehabilitation improvements.
The Park Improvement Corps would create 100,000 jobs for youth between the ages of 16 and 25 through new funding to the Department of the Interior and the USDA Forest Service’s Public Lands Corps Act. Young people would work on conservation projects on public lands include restoration and rehabilitation of natural, cultural, and historic resources.
The Student Jobs Corps would create 250,000 more part-time, work study jobs for eligible college students through new funding for the Federal Work Study Program.
The Neighborhood Heroes Corps would hire 300,000 teachers, 40,000 new police officers, and 12,000 firefighters.
The Health Corps would hire at least 40,000 health care providers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and health care workers to expand access in underserved rural and urban areas.
The Child Care Corps would create 100,000 jobs in early childhood care and education through additional funding for Early Head Start.
The Community Corps would hire 750,000 individuals to do necessary work in our communities, including housing rehab, weatherization, recycling, and rural conservation.
Or, alternatively, we can have all those millions of people, our fellow Americans, do nothing all day, as they lose their jobs, lose their homes, and slide slowly into poverty and bankruptcy.
And I’ll tell you one thing for sure: more corporate welfare will not create jobs. In the past ten years, we have crammed trillions of dollars into the pockets of Big Business, through bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, no-bid government contracts, grants, cheap mining and drilling licenses, etc., etc. Do you know how many jobs in America the private sector has created during that time?
Zero.
Actually, less than zero. There are around one million fewer private sector jobs today than there were ten years ago.
We keep handing our money over to the rich, in the vain hope that they will give some of it back. That hasn’t worked, and it won’t work.
So which do you prefer: war or jobs -- jobs for all Americans? I want jobs.
We want jobs. Jobs, health and peace.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
Paid for and Authorized by the Committee to Elect Alan Grayson
8419 Oak Road, Orlando, FL 32819
Alan Grayson
alangrayson@graysonforcongress.com
I like to help my children with their homework, whenever I have time. (And since January, I’ve had more time.) It’s great to help them – I know all the answers, and I never have to take the exams.
Last night, we tried something different. They helped me with my homework. A math problem:
“We are spending $159,000,000,000.00 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. If we ended the wars, brought the troops home, took that money, and created decent jobs paying $30,000 apiece in the United States, then how many jobs would we create?”
Skye, the 16-year-old, took out her phone, clicked on the calculator app, and gave the answer:
“5,300,000 jobs.”
Correct.
I asked the 12-year-old, Star, and the 10-year-old, Sage. Both gave me the right answer:
“5,300,000 jobs.”
Then I asked the 6-year-old twins, Storm and Stone. Storm said “thirty hundred and five.” Stone agreed.
OK, so we have a jobs program that a 10-year-old can understand. But, admittedly, not a six-year-old.
And what would that jobs program do to the unemployment rate? The math is a little more complicated, but the answer is that it would drop the unemployment rate from 9 percent to 5.5 percent. Immediately.
It’s actually better than that, because money that is spent hiring Americans, in America, then circulates in America. Economists tell us that every new job like that creates as many as five other jobs – the employee then pays his rent, the landlord then goes to the restaurant, the waiter then gets his hair cut, and so on. Unemployment, goodbye.
As opposed to spending our money in Iraq, on Iraq. Have you ever been in the desert when it rains? The water runs through the sand so fast that 15 minutes after the rain is over, it’s as though it never rained at all.
That’s what happens to our tax dollars spent in Iraq. The term “bottomless pit” is an understatement.
And what would all those employees do? Well, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky has figured that out. She has introduced a bill to hire 2.2 million people, and her bill breaks down this way:
The School Improvement Corps would create 400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs by funding positions created by public school districts to do needed school rehabilitation improvements.
The Park Improvement Corps would create 100,000 jobs for youth between the ages of 16 and 25 through new funding to the Department of the Interior and the USDA Forest Service’s Public Lands Corps Act. Young people would work on conservation projects on public lands include restoration and rehabilitation of natural, cultural, and historic resources.
The Student Jobs Corps would create 250,000 more part-time, work study jobs for eligible college students through new funding for the Federal Work Study Program.
The Neighborhood Heroes Corps would hire 300,000 teachers, 40,000 new police officers, and 12,000 firefighters.
The Health Corps would hire at least 40,000 health care providers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and health care workers to expand access in underserved rural and urban areas.
The Child Care Corps would create 100,000 jobs in early childhood care and education through additional funding for Early Head Start.
The Community Corps would hire 750,000 individuals to do necessary work in our communities, including housing rehab, weatherization, recycling, and rural conservation.
Or, alternatively, we can have all those millions of people, our fellow Americans, do nothing all day, as they lose their jobs, lose their homes, and slide slowly into poverty and bankruptcy.
And I’ll tell you one thing for sure: more corporate welfare will not create jobs. In the past ten years, we have crammed trillions of dollars into the pockets of Big Business, through bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, no-bid government contracts, grants, cheap mining and drilling licenses, etc., etc. Do you know how many jobs in America the private sector has created during that time?
Zero.
Actually, less than zero. There are around one million fewer private sector jobs today than there were ten years ago.
We keep handing our money over to the rich, in the vain hope that they will give some of it back. That hasn’t worked, and it won’t work.
So which do you prefer: war or jobs -- jobs for all Americans? I want jobs.
We want jobs. Jobs, health and peace.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
Paid for and Authorized by the Committee to Elect Alan Grayson
8419 Oak Road, Orlando, FL 32819
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Guns or Butter
There are 23 million Americans who can’t find full-time work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There are 50 million Americans who can’t see a doctor when they are sick, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
There are more than 15 million American families who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, according to Zillow. That’s almost a third of all the families who own homes.
If I were in Congress right now, these are the problems that I would be trying to solve.
But instead, we see a bizarre preoccupation – no, really, an obsession – with cutting federal benefits. Some kind of weird contest to see who can inflict the most pain on the American people. With the proponent of each new sadistic plan announcing proudly, “mine is bigger than yours.”
I’ll be honest – the federal deficit for the year 2021 is not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, these days. But let’s assume – arguendo, as they used to say back in Ancient Rome – that for some reason, there were some compelling, emergency need to work out how to cut $2 trillion from projected federal budget deficits over the next ten years.
I have an idea about how to do that. It’s a very simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up in one word, with five letters:
PEACE.
Now, I know that peace may not be as popular as it used to be. The polling is very iffy. The focus groups are mixed. But let’s look at the facts.
Last year, we spent $154 billion in appropriated funds on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is in addition to the $549 billion in appropriated funds for the Pentagon – you know, just to keep the lights on. And the non-appropriated cost of war was even higher – especially when you include the cost of care for the 15% of all the American troops in Iraq who come home with permanent brain abnormalities. According to Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, the war in Iraq alone is costing us $4 trillion and counting. That’s more than $13,000 for every one of us, and roughly 8% of our entire net worth as a nation.
The cost of war is enormous. So enormous that, as I pointed out in H.R. 5353, The War is Making You Poor Act, if we simply funded that cost through the Pentagon’s own budget, rather than through supplemental appropriations, we could eliminate taxes on everyone’s first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for married couples), and still reduce the deficit by more than $10 billion a year.
And that was last year. Since then, the number of wars has gone up by 50%.
This is what Pat Buchanan – of all people, Pat Buchanan – said two weeks ago:
"The United States is strategically over-extended, worldwide. What are we doing borrowing money from Japan to defend Japan. Borrow money from Europe to defend Europe. Borrow money from the Persian Gulf to defend the Persian Gulf. This country is over-extended. It is an empire and the empire is coming down."
You say that you want to save $2 trillion in ten years? It’s simple: end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and end whatever it is that they are calling it now in Libya. I’d rather do that than throw Granny from the train.
But that’s just me.
Guns or butter. It’s not a new choice.
I prefer butter.
What about you?
Courage,
Alan Grayson
P.S. Please sign our petition at http://www.no-cuts.com/. And pass it on to every friend you have. It’s important -- let’s be heard.
There are 50 million Americans who can’t see a doctor when they are sick, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
There are more than 15 million American families who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, according to Zillow. That’s almost a third of all the families who own homes.
If I were in Congress right now, these are the problems that I would be trying to solve.
But instead, we see a bizarre preoccupation – no, really, an obsession – with cutting federal benefits. Some kind of weird contest to see who can inflict the most pain on the American people. With the proponent of each new sadistic plan announcing proudly, “mine is bigger than yours.”
I’ll be honest – the federal deficit for the year 2021 is not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, these days. But let’s assume – arguendo, as they used to say back in Ancient Rome – that for some reason, there were some compelling, emergency need to work out how to cut $2 trillion from projected federal budget deficits over the next ten years.
I have an idea about how to do that. It’s a very simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up in one word, with five letters:
PEACE.
Now, I know that peace may not be as popular as it used to be. The polling is very iffy. The focus groups are mixed. But let’s look at the facts.
Last year, we spent $154 billion in appropriated funds on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is in addition to the $549 billion in appropriated funds for the Pentagon – you know, just to keep the lights on. And the non-appropriated cost of war was even higher – especially when you include the cost of care for the 15% of all the American troops in Iraq who come home with permanent brain abnormalities. According to Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, the war in Iraq alone is costing us $4 trillion and counting. That’s more than $13,000 for every one of us, and roughly 8% of our entire net worth as a nation.
The cost of war is enormous. So enormous that, as I pointed out in H.R. 5353, The War is Making You Poor Act, if we simply funded that cost through the Pentagon’s own budget, rather than through supplemental appropriations, we could eliminate taxes on everyone’s first $35,000 of income ($70,000 for married couples), and still reduce the deficit by more than $10 billion a year.
And that was last year. Since then, the number of wars has gone up by 50%.
This is what Pat Buchanan – of all people, Pat Buchanan – said two weeks ago:
"The United States is strategically over-extended, worldwide. What are we doing borrowing money from Japan to defend Japan. Borrow money from Europe to defend Europe. Borrow money from the Persian Gulf to defend the Persian Gulf. This country is over-extended. It is an empire and the empire is coming down."
You say that you want to save $2 trillion in ten years? It’s simple: end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and end whatever it is that they are calling it now in Libya. I’d rather do that than throw Granny from the train.
But that’s just me.
Guns or butter. It’s not a new choice.
I prefer butter.
What about you?
Courage,
Alan Grayson
P.S. Please sign our petition at http://www.no-cuts.com/. And pass it on to every friend you have. It’s important -- let’s be heard.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
