This is a rant. Make no mistake about it. And in a perfect world it would be the final rant, the nail in the coffin, the absolute end of the political idiocy and incompetence of Richard “Dick” “Doc” Hastings. A man who’s principals are divided between the have’s and must-have-more’s in Washington State if not the country as a whole. Hastings approach to the Iraq war has been one of absolute compliance to his diminishing GOP masters. It seems that the man still looks at the Newt Gingrich ‘contract on america’ (my context) as it was a fresh view and a promise of a new age in American society instead of the failed policy that has drawn this country in to endless controversy and conflict and his own party’s seemingly endless corruption. His attitude toward the changing tide of American sentiment has been to stand all 5 foot 4 inches of his small stature in this nations history as high as he can next to a President who’s political stature has diminished beyond return. Pretending anything different is like planning to break 80 when your hitting a 107 at the 17th hole. And thus we have Doc Hastings.

Hastings lone holdout for Washigton State on the sChip vote and holding fast with the President’s veto should be the last straw. The bill, a highly political bill, serves a great purpose in contrast of priorities. Democrats have every right to politicize this bill. They have every right to extend the override vote for two weeks as they have done. It is a matter of priorities for this country. This isn’t, as Hastings and his GOP horn blowers would have you believe, a step toward national health care. Simply put, a national health care system would look nothing like sChip but instead look more like a leveraging of the commercial system we already have. No, this is a finger plugging the dam measure to reel in the massively incomparable spending priorities the first 6 years under a republican presidency have brought us. It’s about priorities. And Hastings is as guilty as Ted Bundy in his reckless murdering of the GOP’s long past principles of fiscal responsibility. He’s thrown those principles in a ditch and left them to die. He has done so by his relentless support for the Iraq war and his support for wealthy tax cuts that continually widen the divide between the rich and poor.

Iv’e heard a few numbers thrown about on the sChip expansion. Some as high 50 billion and some as low as 10. No matter. One easy way to look at this is that even at it’s highest, 50 billion really equals 50 days in Iraq. That’s 1 month 21 or so days. Hastings says it’s too expensive… please review the last two sentences. Previously he said it would close down physician owned clinics. I called him on that early on and Doc quickly changed his tune. In the end, Hastings is Washington State’s only congressman to vote against the bill.

Doc isn’t short on rhetoric either:

It’s discouraging that rather than making certain the kids most in need get signed up for care, some are intent on expanding the program to the point that families of four earning over $80,000 a year will switch from existing private insurance to taxpayer-funded care.

One of the many Hastings outright lies on this issue. I can’t provide you an example… and neither can the GOP. If in fact there is a family of 4 or so with an income of 80k getting coverage under sChip, the circumstances must be very, very dire. And a few examples certainly doesn’t justify Hastings point.

We also need to end abuses. It’s troubling that many states are giving children’s health care funds to adults. In fact, Wisconsin covers almost twice as many adults as children.

The battle cry of the Gingrich republican. Backed with little fact. On the other hand…

New research funded by the Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured (ERIU) at the University of Michigan shows that one state’s SCHIP expansion, Wisconsin’s BadgerCare, was successful in preserving health care coverage for a particularly vulnerable population of welfare leavers, single mothers. University of Wisconsin economist Barbara Wolfe and colleagues found that BadgerCare, one of the nation’s few SCHIP programs covering adults, increased public coverage by up to 29 percentage points among one cohort of single mothers who left welfare for work.

…lets talk about the economic benefits of no-bid contracts in Iraq, Doc? Priorities?

The 4th CD should take Hastings to the mattresses over this as he has blanked out on his constituency who by a large majority support this bill. It isn’t a matter of agreeing completely with sChip, we could all find some common ground. We could argue over the cigarette tax that in part funds sChip as a non-sustainable funding source, though through quitting (or through unfortunate attrition), the cost of emergency room visits for both uninsured smokers and uninsured kids would be reduced dramatically. It simply isn’t the point. The point is that the 4th CD needs some real representation with real priorities instead of empty GOP rhetoric while absolutely nothing gets done. There are no real feathers in Hastings cap. Just a bunch of hot air and sChip is another prime example of that. If Hastings won’t listen, we need to toss him out.