John McCain: The Worst Senator For Children
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Dear Republicans,
We’ll stop saying you hate children and the elderly when that stops being true.
Love, Oliver
20 Responses to “John McCain: The Worst Senator For Children”
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The views on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect the views of my employer, Media Matters for America
© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Dear Oliver:
I promise to stop mocking Democrats for trying to justify everything under the sun as “for the children” when 1) they stop nuttiness like this, where A) SCHIP expansion gets counted twice; B) the overall federal budget is counted as a key element in children’s welfare; C) the DREAM Act (alias “in-state tuition for illegal aliens”) is listed as a benefit for American children; and D) the minimum wage for adults is listed as essential for children; and E) SCHIP expansion gets counted twice; and 2) when they stop believing that the role of the federal government is essential in the welfare of our children.
I, personally, learned that lesson when I saw the Bill Clinton/Janet Reno Child Care Center in Waco, Texas shut down on April 19. 1993.
J.
Thanks, Oliver! That link of yours just gave me over 2500 words of posting material, and two very lengthy articles. I would have missed it, if it wasn’t for you.
It helped that I was certain that there was a hell of a lot of bullshit behind the original article, and you hadn’t bothered to look at the details. I was right beyond my wildest fantasies.
J.
This is crushing to the McCain camp. I bet, because of this article, he receives ZERO votes from children ages 0-17 in November!
I, personally, learned that lesson when I saw the Bill Clinton/Janet Reno Child Care Center in Waco, Texas shut down on April 19. 1993.
Seek therapy.
Oh lord. We’re back to “FOR THE CHILDREN!!!” as a Democratic talking point. You guys really need some new material.
Soon we’ll be hearing “Big _________” whatever.
They count SCHIP twice because it was voted on twice. And McCain wasn’t there. Twice.
Boo-hoo for you.
Morris Udall said “If the republicans will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about Republicans.”
Another laugh line from Oliver. Maybe you’ll grow up one of these years..
The really fun part is that it’s flagrantly obvious that the standard clowns here haven’t actually LOOKED AT the ten votes the CDF chose to single out as “most important to America’s children. In addition to the two votes on SCHIP (expanding it to cover “children” as old as 25 and families making 4X the poverty level), here are the other eight votes:
- More money for Head Start (OK, IF you buy into the argument that “getting the kids away from parents and into the school system as fast as possible” is a good thing)
- The combined budgets of the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (because it doesn’t matter if most of it might be fatally flawed, as long as the bureaucrats who “care” for kids get their money
- The DREAM Act (in-state tuition for illegal aliens, in preference to Americans and legal immigrants who happen to live in other states)
- Shift money from student loans to grants (because teaching kids responsibility is such a drag, instead of creating a new sense of entitlement, and college students are definitely under the purview of CDF)
- Increase the minimum wage (because so many children work at minimum-wage jobs as soon as kindergarten is dismissed)
- Increase taxes on the rich to give more money for the disabled (because some of those will be children)
- Expand the power and scope of the FDA (because children take the lion’s share of prescription drugs)
- The entire federal budget (because, as above, as long as the bureaucrats who are in charge of taking care of our children get their money, nothing else matters)
That John McCain voted against nine of those ten measures makes him the number one baby-hater in the US Senate.
It’s laughable. Or, rather, it would be, if goobers like the regular dips and sycophants here didn’t take it so seriously.
Go and look for yourself. Follow Oliver’s link, then go to the CDF web site, then click on the PDFs explaining which ten votes they picked. It’s all there, IF you’re willing to look and think for yourself.
Whoops, my apologies. That kind of rules out a lot of Oliver’s lickspittles here.
J.
Okay, here’s my thing. Looking this over I can see that the grade they gave McCain is due not to his voting against these measures (which are in some senses only very indirectly child-related) but due to his not voting at all. A case can be made he has no excuse for not voting, but it is difficult to say, paraphrasing Rumsfield, that absence of support for these programs is the same as supporting the absence of these programs. Voting No on SCHIP reauthorization fits, but nothing else does directly. The Children’s Defense Fund was likely hasty in calling him “worst” for children considering he only is so by what seems to be a technicality in their own rubrick over a very brief voting period.
I would invite a counter argument showing what McCain has otherwise voted for in relation to the welfare of U.S. Children. However, amid all the attacks on the study and its findings (which does seem somewhat deserved in context) and the giggling over calling out liberals as “For the Children” “Bullshitting” “Lickspittles” (which kinda isnt) as far as I can tell none of you actually dispute the implication of the study and its headline. Do you actualy think it would have returned a different result looking at a different set of votes or something, or am I forced to assume you actually concede the point but need to do so with as much hostility as WordPress will allow?
…except this is Moveable Type now isnt it… crap. I just gave you all an excuse to focus on that instead of the discussion and pretend you’ve won it. Sorry everyone.
Back your arguments by citing your sources, WizWank. This isn’t your blog where your mouthbreathing audience swallows hyperbole without question.
- Increase the minimum wage (because so many children work at minimum-wage jobs as soon as kindergarten is dismissed)
Is there a conservative horse in here?
I’m asking ’cause I smell conservative horseshit.
pd, I don’t need to cite any sources of my own.
I just used Oliver’s.
And unlike him, apparently, I actually looked at the source material.
Follow the chain, pd, because I don’t want to have to explain this to you more than once:
Oliver linked to ThinkProgress, which synopsized the Children’s Defense Fund report and linked to their press release.
CDF’s press release linked to PDF reports which spelled out each key vote, its effect on children, and their opinion of how senators should have voted.
Here’s one example:
Don’t take my word for it. (Like that would happen.) Follow Oliver’s link to ThinkProgress, then to the CDF, and then to their PDFs.
Yes, I put my own interpretation on each, but that’s my opinion. I think I’m still entitled to do that. I didn’t do a damned thing to the actual votes that the CDF singled out as the ten most important to children — and on that basis alone.
J.
Yes, I put my own interpretation on each, but that’s my opinion.
Ahem-
Hyperbole: hy·per·bo·le /haɪˈpɜrbəli/ –noun
1.Rhetoric. 2. obvious and intentional exaggeration.
————-
The Minimum Wage Act: A bill to increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour, over a period of two years.
Jay’s ake: “because so many children work at minimum-wage jobs as soon as kindergarten is dismissed”
And then there is reality:
A $7.25 per hour in 2009, taking into account the increases in a family’s Earned Income Tax Credit and refundable Child Tax Credit, would move a family of four from 11 percent below the poverty line in 2009, if there is no change in law, to 5 percent above the poverty line.
Bag of Hammers, Meet Jay Tea.
pd:
Yes, I used hyperbole and sarcasm to make my point. Around here, I thought that was par for the course.
But let’s take your example one step further, shall we?
Just how many families of four feature two parents making minimum wage? For an entire year?
It’s almost impossible to keep a minimum-wage job for an entire year. Either you prove your worth and get a raise, or you prove your worthlessness and get fired to make room for someone who is worth it.
Weigh the numbers of people who qualify under your scenario against the very logical promises by employers to simply hire fewer people to do work, and I’d strongly suspect that a lot more people will be HURT by the minimum wage hike than will be benefited. But you brought up the numbers; let’s see some more.
The CDF says that the increased minimum wage was CRITICAL to the welfare of America’s children, and you are buying into that. And you’ve touted an absolutely meaningless statistic — a numerical sleight of hand — to back it up.
If you can readily tell how much the increased minimum wage will benefit a hypothetical family, I’m certain you can tell me just how many real families fit that criteria — two parents, two children, both parents making minimum wage for an entire year.
I’m betting it works out to somewhere between damned few and zero.
J.
If you can readily tell how much the increased minimum wage will benefit a hypothetical family, I’m certain you can tell me just how many real families fit that criteria — two parents, two children, both parents making minimum wage for an entire year.
I’m betting it works out to somewhere between damned few and zero”
The Center for Economic Policy Research shows that half of minimum wage earners are between ages 25 and 54, and a third of them will still be stuck earning the minimum wage three years later. Only 40 percent of earners had moved out of the low-wage workforce three years later.
“Raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour will mean an additional $4,370 a year to help minimum wage earners support their families. That’s enough for a minimum wage family to buy
Almost two years of child care-
Full tuition for a community college degree-
A year and a half of heat and electricity- o More than a year of groceries-
More than 9 months of rent-”
And unlike him, apparently, I actually looked at the source material.
You looked at the source material and then came up with:
- Increase the minimum wage (because so many children work at minimum-wage jobs as soon as kindergarten is dismissed)
Somebody bring a shovel.
Interesting stats, pd. Too bad they don’t apply to the question at hand: how many families consists of two parents who earn exactly the minimum wage for a whole year?
J.
I really gotta hand it to your tenacity, Jay -
-given the ridiculously narrow framework of your question.
“how many families consists of two parents who earn exactly the minimum wage for a whole year?”
The minimum wage increase cannot be quantified whatsoever throughout the 48 flat since the above mentioned studies do not specify whether the families researched had 1 2, 3 or ten children or 1 or 2 working parents, a single parent etc.
Nor has it been determined whether said families have granite countertops, either. Thus, the studies are flat out false. There is no benefit to any child if working parents who earn minimum wage would ever get government mandated a pay raise – ever. ever. ever.
I doff my cap.
Hey, I didn’t define the “ridiculously narrow framework.” I just took the example you cited and asked how many people that represented.
I stand by my initial observation: the CDF’s rankings are utterly worthless. The ten votes they chose to rate the members of Congress on are absolutely ludicrous; most of them only marginally affect children, and any other flaws in the legislation are utterly irrelevant.
The total federal budget vote is the best example. It also contained funding for the Iraq war, the Department of Labor, NASA, and the Bureau of Prisons — just to name four areas that have very little to do with children. If a Congresscritter had a problem with any one of them and chose to vote against the total budget, they’d get ranked as “anti-children.”
A close second for most absurd is the DREAM Act. Votign against a bill that would create circumstances where illegal aliens get preferential treatment over American citizens is somehow “anti-children?”
You wanna defend the CDA report, be my guest. I’ve never been drunk or stoned enough to pull that one off.
J.