SCHIP, Poverty and the Wastrel

Bush doesn't know a lot of words, and having never been poor, challenged, or even held to account despite decades of poor performance and bad behavior he can't be expected to understand poverty, which has generally been hidden from television viewers. He's a protected, greedy and jealous snot, working for the first time in his entire boomer life to keep you from getting anything out of your tax payments.

I'm sure he doesn't get or care about the irony in his opposition to the present state of SCHIP legislation. He's been sheltered his whole life by the federal government, and is now protecting us from being protected by it. His parents were career government workers, and their extraction industry benefactors have also benefited non-stop from the largesse of the US Taxpayer.

In just the past few years though, gasoline has tripled in price. Milk is up to almost 2X. Everything has ballooned in price, although some markets are lagging. Per-capita income has dropped, if you excuse the financial services and energy swindle industries. So even if you weren't poor in the last days of Clinton, keeping your 4% annual salary raise wasn't enough and now you live per paycheck.

So that $60,000 per year anywhere near the formerly industrial northeast or midwest is peanuts. A family of four earning $60K is strapped. Mr. Bush takes home a salary nearly double that of his predecessor (properly aligning this executive salary with the insane disproportion of his corporate peers despite leaving the for-profit sector to go into Presidentin'), and he still sits on his blueblood cushion.

SCHIP gives Americans too much of what they want: something.