Littlest of the Little People

“Only the little people pay taxes.” – Leona Helmsley

Ah, how much of the adversities of life you miss out on when you are not a peasant. In the US we have a federally funded program called SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) which is a health insurance plan for children of lower income parents. It covers over 6 million children. The Bush administration wants to limit the number of children that are on this program. They don’t like that some states include children that are above the poverty line though they do not qualify for other insurance programs. What?! A government that doesn’t care about the health of its children? Why am I not surprised?

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, SCHIP costs taxpayers $7 billion dollars a year. Let’s put that into perspective. Let’s see how much it really sets us back. Roughly, SCHIP covers about $1,500 per child. That's not a lot when it comes to medical expenses.

We spend $5 billion dollars a month on the war in Iraq. And remember that this taxpayer money actually goes into the bank accounts of private industries such as General Dynamics with $10.6 billion in military weaponry contracts in 2004 alone or to Blackwater Security for their highly paid mercenaries. And gee, I thought we were paying our US Army to do this work.

Exxon, a single oil company, posted a 2005 profit of $36 billion dollars and a 2006 profit of $39.5 billion dollars.

Halliburton actually misplaced $9 billion dollars. Hey! That’s OUR money – where the hell did you put it! If they find that money it would be a whole year of the program. And maybe we could also revoke our yearly contract, of $5.2 billion dollars, with them which would also pay for most of SCHIP every year.

It’s funny to listen to so called patriots and nationalists, especially Republicans, preach about how people should make sacrifices for the citizens of their country but then, they complain that they have to contribute tax dollars to other citizen’s health care and medical treatment. What a bunch of hypocrites. They don’t know sacrifice – they only know self-preservation. No surprise there.

- Just a peasant

Photo of a neonatal unit in the UK