Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Cutting Veteran's Health Care and Transmission

From AP, via:

Washington - The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans' health care two years from now - even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012.

After an increase sought for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly - by more than 10 percent in many years - White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

The proposed cuts are unrealistic in light of recent VA budget trends - its medical care budget has risen every year for two decades and 83 percent in the six years since Bush took office - sowing suspicion that the White House is simply making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better.

"Either the administration is willingly proposing massive cuts in VA health care," said Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, chairman of the panel overseeing the VA's budget. "Or its promise of a balanced budget by 2012 is based on completely unrealistic assumptions."

Edwards said that a more realistic estimate of veterans costs is $16 billion higher than the Bush estimate for 2012.

In fact, even the White House doesn't seem serious about the numbers. It says the long-term budget numbers don't represent actual administration policies. Similar cuts assumed in earlier budgets have been reversed.

The veterans' cuts, said White House budget office spokesman Sean Kevelighan, "don't reflect any policy decisions. We'll revisit them when we do the (future) budgets."

The number of veterans coming into the VA health care system has been rising by about 5 percent a year as the number of people returning from Iraq with illnesses or injuries keep rising. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans represent almost 5 percent of the VA's patient caseload, and many are returning from battle with grievous injuries requiring costly care, such as traumatic brain injuries.

All told, the VA expects to treat about 5.8 million patients next year, including 263,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.


Wow. So rarely do you see a government spokesman actually admit, "Oh, no, we're not going to fuck American war vets. We're only saying we're going to fuck American war vets so we can lie about how the budget's going to be balanced. Isn't that better?"

Yes. Much.

But remember, the Defeatocrats don't support the troops! Only Bush followers support the troops by ... well, not with equipment or protecting their families from bankruptcy or taking care of them after they're wounded, buuuuuut ... even better methods!

Secret methods. Sweeeeet methods.

Deep in their secret patriot place.

You wouldn't understand.

All (weak) joking aside, this leads to a slightly larger issue about the 2008 elections. The next President, Democrat or Republican, is going to have to raise taxes. Period. We're in the shitter, kids, financially. It is crucial that the Democrats list three -- I say three, son, no more no less -- concrete things they are going to do with that money.

"Silly John, tax money goes into a general fund, it can't be directly --"

You, in the back. Shut the fuck up. The point is to work with the metaphors and processes already imprinted on our common experience. In my everyday life, when I spend money, I get some thing. Not "something." "Some thing."

Contrast this:

"We're going to raise taxes."
"Holy SHIT! You're going to raise my taxes?"
"No, we're raising mostly corporate and high-income ..."
"Did you hear that? These sonuvabitches are raising taxes! Like they always do!"
"Actually --"
"What are you going to do with my money?"
"A lot of very good stuff."
"Right."

With:
"We're passing a millionaire's tax, to pay for the care of wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan war."
"What are you going to do with --"
"We said. Take care of wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan War. Problem?"
"Of course not."

Simplistic? Of course. But transmittable. Not just from candidate to voter, but amongst voters. This element of -- here's the word, I know you hate it -- memetics seems to be an afterthought in most progressive political efforts. But the voter as vector for your ideas is far more powerful than 90% of the candidate's presentation of these ideas. Most people see a presidential candidate on their nightly news for maybe two minutes. Sometimes they read the slug headline on their AOL home page or see it one the Yahoo News screen at the local mall. Any substantive discussion of politics is within family and coworker communities.

The point is, yes, we do need to build political communities. But more important, we need to infect existing ones.

You're starting to see with the YouTube campaign video. However, there's a tendency to believe that somehow the technology is creating something new. Of course not. YouTube just makes video more transmittable. We need to do the same things with the ideas themselves to work in the medium of person-to-person interaction. The dizzying bit is that the Web extends our reach; we -- anyone -- can present our ideas to a startlingly large number of people very easily. But unless those ideas then hook into inter-personal communication, they skate off the surface and back out into the ether. I don't care how clever your ad is (it'll quickly be replaced by the next bit of video ephemera), or how pretty your speech is. Or how inspiring. If a listener doesn't come away with concrete ideas he can then transmit to other voters for you, the effort is not effective.

End of the day, stripping all the shiny new tech tools away, it's about crafting big thunky words people can remember in their very busy brains long enough to say with their clumsy old mouths to other people.

55 comments:

Anonymous said...

How 'bout a defense contract tax to pay for veteran's benefits and rebuilding the military? KBR, Ratheon and McDonnell-Douglas seem to be doing OK.

Seems elegant and transmittable.

John Radke said...

god fucking dammit. i wish those fuckers out there with the self-important "support our troops" ribbons on their bumpers would actually read and think about shit like this. how, precisely, do you support the troops? i would ask them. you pray for them? oh, wonderful. You bake cookies for the 23-year-old widow from your hometown? golly, what a sacrifice. how about making sure they stay alive and healthy, and that their mental health issues are fucking taken seriously?

i don't care if you support the war or not. it really doesn't matter at this point. but if you're going to stick those fucking magnets on your car, and fly a fucking flag from your cubicle in the accounting department, how about you stop talking about how great the troops are and start actually supporting them with your money and your voice?

Anonymous said...

John,

Just donated to Fisher House. Also sending you an e-mail. Thanks for all your work.

No kings,

Robert

Anonymous said...

John,

Hmmm, can't seem to send you an e-mail.

I'm an Intarweb idiot, so can someone help me out?

I tried kfmonkey(nospam)@gmail.com

Says it's not acceptable address. Do I have to take out the parentheses, or the parentheses and everything inside them, or what? Thanks for helping an electronic illiterate.

No kings,

Robert

Anonymous said...

Damnit, that last anonymous post was me, Desert Son. See what I mean?

No kings,

Robert

Anonymous said...

Desert son,

Try removing '(nospam)' from the email address. It's in there to confuse the webspiders that are searching for spammable email addresses online ;-)

Unknown said...

So the AP did a story about a president who wants to balance the budget by the time he's no longer the president. Then a fairly intelligent blogger reads the story and uses it to convey his frustrations with the current leadership and what that implies for the next, and so on.

I guess I get it, but really, don't many two-term presidents do things like plan to have everything peachy on a plan that cuts a few years into someone else's presidency (knowing full well the new president will not be able/not desire to achieve stated objectives)?

Anonymous said...

We need a retroactive tax on those magnetic ribbons:

$100 per plain yellow ribbon.
$200 for ribbons with stars and stripes.
$350 for those extra-super-patriotic ribbons with Camo patterns and stars and stripes.

Double everything if it's on an SUV.

Triple if there's a W in 2004 sticker.

All proceeds directly to the care of injured vets.

Benari said...

And this is from February! And still, not so much as rumble from the mainstream media...

Not only is this typical of the administration, it's also a sad bucking of responsibility. Which is also typical.

The reason to cut the funds in the future budget is to saddle the next poor schmuck in the WH with the cuts. They may not even know it's in their proposed budget (if they're not paying attention) and then will have to explain the cut. And, as John said, they'll have to raise taxes or cut something else to cover the cost.

Which they'll have to do anyway.
It's the administration's typical MO: all our current problems are because of the last guy and in two years, all the problems will be THAT president's fault. You know their motto: the buck stops somewhere over there. A little over...not there, the one next...keep going...

For the record, here's my take.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the email help!

No kings,

Robert

Jameson said...

Bravo on the transmittable memetic idea. The other guys have had years of success infecting political discussions with infinitely chewable talking points which, if you actually read up on the issue, make no sense or are downright false. It's high time our side gave it a try - imagine how much happier everyone would be if the great-sounding ideas behind the talking points actually got better when you read up on them!

Jim said...

Hummm -- can we name the National Debt in honor of W? "The George W. Bush National Debt" -- it has a nice ring!

Anonymous said...

Jay, you are either missing the point by a mile or being deliberately obtuse. What part of cutting veteran health care spending while we are in a war equates to the usual budgetary fudging? John isn't pointing to some arcane budgetary chicanery like underestimating the interest paid to debt maintenance 3 years down the road.

He's pointing out that President If You Don't Support My War Then You Don't Support The Troops is planning on CUTTING the money used to take care of our tens of thousands of wounded veterans caused by his fucked up war. Come on, man.

Anonymous said...

Oops, not that it matters but the above post was mine.

Anonymous said...

Thank God there'll be something to do with the money when someone finally institutes the desperately needed carbon tax....

Unknown said...

Aluvius - you may have me on the obtuse angle, though I'm not sure about deliberate. I was hoping to have missed something in the analysis of what Bush is planning to do with the budget he will no longer control in 2009 and 2010.

While I'll agree on the face that it is ridiculous for him to show this as his rationale to balance the budget by 2012 (four years after he's gone), I don't really think there's much to it.

He's talking about cuts made after his term is up - not cutting veteran's health care now, while it's in his control. It won't be up to him come January 09, so who cares what he says he's planning to cut or fund or other. It's inconsequential, and it's silly to look at his budget planning beyond next year.

Anonymous said...

May I offer a suggestion? Instead of raising taxes--which the next president certainly does not have to do--why not just cut the budget? Were I World Czar, the U.S. budget could stand some major trimming--say to the tune of around a trillion dollars. I believe that would leave more funds to deal with the important stuff--like taking care of wounded troops.

Not sure why folks can consider that the government can actually get by with less. It neither needs nor deserves more. Starve the beast.

Anonymous said...

Starve the beast.

Not gonna happen. Too many things people WANT government to do for it to occur.

Just because some people think government is inherently evil doesn't mean that there's nothing good that it can do.

Rev.Paperboy said...

regarding the much needed yellow ribbon tax
http://kevinswoodshed.blogspot.com/2006/09/stick-yellow-ribbon-on-your-suv-asylum.html

Anonymous said...

Beyond the yellow ribbons and "support the troops" BS, most Americans today simply don't give a shit about troops or veterans. Plain and simple. Disagree? Roll back the calendar 30, 40 years to Vietnam. Americans couldn't care less about Vietnam Veterans then and care even less about them now. Back then the majority of adult Americans were from the World War II generation and blamed the Vietnam Veterans for everything going wrong then. That attitude carried over and will persist FOREVER or as long as America exists.

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