THE MILITARY

Leaving Combat for the Classroom

Dissecting the new GI bill's benefits.

By Dan Ephron | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Jul 2, 2008 | Updated: 11:57 a.m. ET Jul 2, 2008

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Discuss

Posted By: mrzoid @ 07/15/2008 1:01:24 AM

Comment: good god almighty, ur all writing essays!!! All GIs deserve a full payment on their education, and it will help the country to provide it. McCain or Obama, u clowns need to realize that the GIs in this country shouldnt have to worry about your political will in regards to their entitlement. Some are Dems, some are Repub, but all are in danger; thats more than most of you blowhards will ever have to be. Thats not a condemnation against all of you, but alot of you dont know a damn thing about service, and you are pathetic when you talk about our guys (my brother) like they are some sort of political commodity. Knock it off, you dont deserve to use the military for ur political ends, especially you war drum banging pricks that have never served a day in ur lives!!!
Posted By: Nins @ 07/07/2008 1:25:51 PM

Comment: Did you know that if McCain is elected you will have to pay income tax on the value of the medical insurance that your employer gives you? Worse still, he is offering a tax break for people who pay their own insurance, BUT only $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families.

Let's say you have a family of four. Your insurance policy costs would be at least $1,500-2,500 per month under a self-pay plan, which cost more than employer group plans. So, you pay $18,000 -$30,000 per year for insurance, and you get to deduct only $5,000 of that. If you paid $25,000 for you insurance, you would be out of pocket $20,000 per year. This is FAR WORSE than the current system, where if you are self employed you can deduct 100% of you medical insurance costs.

So, if you're not self employed, you would stick with your Employer's plan. Employer plans for a family of four have a value of $900-$1,500 per month totaling 10,800-$18,000 per year. Surprise! On April 15th, you owe tax on all of that as INCOME to you. Say your bracket is 25%, and the value of your Employer medical plan is $14,000. You will OWE THE IRS an additional $3,500, and that's ON TOP of whatever monthly premium you already pay to your employer for your insurance.

Many analysts say that McCain's new rules would encourage employers to stop offering health benefits. If that happened, then far fewer Americans would be insured than are insured today, because what family of four can afford $18,000-$30,000 out of pocket per year for self-pay health insurance?

Furthermore, McCain's plan does not require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions of people who self-pay their insurance. People under employer group plans have all of their pre-existing conditions covered. This is a hugely unfair aspect of the current system. Insurance companies can afford to cover the pre-existing conditions of the much larger pool of people with group insurance, but they refuse to pay the pre-existing conditions on the smaller pool of self-pay customers. They have been allowed to price gouge the self-pay customers, which is a form of market manipulation that should be illegal.

So let's say one of your kids had diabetes and you have high blood pressure, then your employer stops offering insurance. You now have to buy your own, but you and your child are INELIGIBLE due to pre-existing conditions. Oh, yeah, they will let you buy the insurance, but you can't use it for any pre-existing condition until you have paid on time every month for two years. And you know what happens at one year and 11 months? You get a letter saying your policy has been cancelled. I have many patients this has happened to.

McCain's plan SUCKS.

It does nothing to help middle class working Americans afford or obtain medical insurance. In fact, it makes the current system WORSE.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/04/29/mccain_unveils_health_care_pla.html?nav=rss_email/components
Posted By: Nins @ 07/04/2008 9:13:57 PM

Comment: Here's some change you can believe in: the amount of times McCain has changed his values and positions on the issues.

The reason half of the conservative Christian right hates McCain is because they think that they can't trust him. McCain started his career as part of the Christian right (there's a little-known fact). Once he landed in the soup as part of the Keating Five (which almost derailed his career) he positioned himself as a liberal and became a reformer for campaign finance in an effort to resurrect himself. In case you who don't remember, the Keating scandal had to do with some shim sham corporations pumping money into McCain's coffers. So McCain became a reformer to shine up his tarnished image, and that was his first departure from the right.

Other, more serious betrayals of the right came later, after McCain got swift boated by Bush. The great Texas Republican political machine laid McCain to waste, and McCain was mad as hell. He started voting against the party line and against Bush. He suddenly supported abortion rights, opposed the Bush tax cuts, co-sponsored a patient's bill of rights with Kennedy and Edwards, and got on the environmental bandwagon with John Kerry. He called Jerry Falwell an "agent of intolerance." He actually tried to crack down on gun shows in legislation he put forth with then-Democrat Joe Lieberman. In 2001, when Senator Jeffords of Vermont switched from Republican to Independent in an effort to counteract Bush's stranglehold on the Senate, McCain announced that he was considering becoming a Democrat, and went into a pow-wow with Senator Tom Daschle at his Sedona ranch. And did you know that John Kerry floated the idea of having McCain as his VP in '04? That was to have cemented his status as a newly-minted Democrat.

But instead of joining Kerry, McCain suddenly switched his affiliation, came out in support of Bush in '04, and jettisoned his liberal image. Suddenly, it was the "old" McCain from the 1980s back in the saddle, the neo-conservative, take no prisoners Creationist. Against abortion. For the war. The SAME man who opposed a Federal amendment banning gay marriage and openly met with gay groups now was pushing a gay marriage ban in Arizona. The SAME man who said in 1999 that he was opposed to overturning Roe vs. Wade, now suddenly in 2007 is promising that he will stack the deck in the Supreme Court with religious right judges and overturn Roe vs. Wade.

But the religious right isn't so sure about him. He's supported so many different opposing positions at so many times, that they are afraid that they are getting played in the name of McCain's political expediency.

You don't have to take my word for this. Watch news clips of McCain talking about the same issues in different years, which proves what I have written. Get on the Straight Talk Express and get it straight from the horse's mouth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajm5JTf7jZs
Posted By: Nins @ 07/03/2008 2:12:31 PM

Comment: Did you know McCain has had 4 different campaign managers? McCain just can't get it right. He keeps changing managers, as if it is their fault that he can not succeed. Fact is, McCain is NOT a good candidate.

After his first run at the Presidency when he got swift boated by Bush, his manager John Weaver got McCain to play "Maverick" and cross party lines to become a NeoLiberal. McCain almost changed parties and became a Democrat and Kerry's running mate, but at the 11th hour he switched horses again and hired Terry Nelson to manage him. Nelson is a strong GOP establishmentarianist, and got McCain to throw himself behind Bush, with promises of the GOP giving him the 2008 nomination. But Nelson didn't last, because the strategy failed. The right wing was suspicious of McCain because McCain voted against abortion, for gay rights and for gun control during his "maverick" phase. They didn't know if they could trust him. Also, Nelson spent money hand over fist, nearly bankrupting McCain's campaign. So he replaced him with Rick Davis, who was at the helm for the past year. Davis is a fiscal conservative, made McCain sell that expensive big bus, and made McCain mind his manners and act polite in public. But now, Davis has been fired too. Why? Because McCain is getting desperate, and the gloves are coming off. His new manager is Steve Schmidt, a Rove disciple and former Rove employee. McCain has also hired Nicole Wallace and Greg Jenkins to head his "Communications Team." Nic and Greg are also former Rove employees, masters of the art of swift boat smear campaigns. McCain going to let the Rove bulldogs off the leash. Look out, America, this is going to get ugly.

My prediction: the 20% of America that is made up of ignorant jingoists will be cheering to see Rove's bloody tactics. But you know what? They were all going to vote for McCain anyway. The rest of America will be so disgusted by the hatchet work of the NeoCons that they will vote AGAINST McCain.

The "last resort" tactic of the GOP to win this election will be to bomb Iran, starting another war. Mark my words, if McCain is not doing well in September, Bush will bomb Iran. He is already setting the stage for this, by saying that Iran has nuclear weapons, even thought inspections by the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency have both found NO EVIDENCE of nuclear weapons. REMIND YOU OF ANYTHING? It's the fake "weapons of mass destruction" all over again.

Did you know that on June 26, Bush, very quietly, declared a state of National Emergency? During a National Emergency the President can DECLARE WAR without waiting for the approval of Congress.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/06/20080626-4.html

It is going to be a very bumpy ride, America, so hold on, and DON'T LET BUSH AND ROVE STEAL ANOTHER ELECTION. I wouldn't mind so much if they were good for the economy, but let's face it, they are destroying America.
- Posted By: WhenStarsTurnBlue @ 07/03/2008 3:19:29 PM
  
  Comment: Um, that's for North Korea, not Iran. And do you know how many National Emergency states we're in right now? Some of them are from the Clinton era, like this one for Cuba:
  
  http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/02/20010227-1.html
  
  Or the National Emergency with Respect to Significant Narcotics Traffickers Centered in Colombia:
  
  http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071018-7.html
  
  Or this one is for Zimbabwe, should we be worried about war with them next?
  
  http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/20080304-6.html
  
  The reason it's been so quiet is that it's not that big of a deal. But if you want to use the fear tatics, go ahead.
  
  Fear: It's not just for right-wing Republicans anymore.
  - Posted By: Nins @ 07/04/2008 2:10:51 AM
    
    Comment: The proclamation of a National Emergency that my link goes to has to do with North Korea possessing nuclear capabilities, and declares a National Emergency in response to this. The point of my blog, a point which your further links helps me to make, is that the President can declare a state of National Emergency at any time, and then declare WAR without the consent of the Congress. Most Americans don't know about this loophole.
Posted By: Thevail @ 07/03/2008 12:15:54 AM

Comment: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25491684/
Posted By: Galasso @ 07/02/2008 9:57:26 PM

Comment: Switching sites - newsweek just attracts too many nut cases.
Posted By: Nins @ 07/02/2008 6:46:10 PM

Comment: Why did the US military cancel a news conference where they were going to display the "Iranian" weapons they found in Iraq? Because there WERE NO IRANIAN WEAPONS to display. Here are links supporting the fact that the weapons found in Iraq did not come from Iran:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_05/013695.php
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/fire_next_time.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/05/iraq-the-elusiv.html

NOT TO MENTION that the Untied States itself has had a notable role in arming the insurgency. When the US dissolved the Iraqi Army, that flooded Iraq with weapons. More recently the Pentagon admitted that it had lost track of a third of the weapons distributed to Iraqi security forces in 2004-05, totaling 190,000 assault rifles and pistols that are currently on the streets of Iraq. The British paper that published this article got it's information straight from the US Government Accounting Office's public website: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pentagon-admits-190000-weapons-missing-in-iraq-460551.html

Ask yourself, why would America want to pretend that Iran is pushing weapons in Iraq, when actually WE (the USA) has flooded Iraq's streets with weapons? Because Bush wants to declare war on Iran, and just like the fake "WMDs" in Iraq, he needs something to frighten Americans, so he comes out with this BS about Iran killing US soldiers in Iraq. He has also said that Iran is making nuclear weapons, but recent inspections have found NO EVIDENCE of nuclear weapons in Iran. JUST LIKE how repeated inspections found NO EVIDENCE of WMDs in Iraq. The reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN inspectors and nuclear experts at the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) all agree that Iran DOES NOT have nuclear weapons. The IAEA report states that Iran only has "low enriched uranium, not the highly-enriched uranium necessary to produce a bomb." The ISIS reports states "It is important to note that they do not encompass the full scope of work required for a comprehensive nuclear weapons program. Missing is theoretical work on nuclear weapons, uranium metallurgy, and the development of a neutron initiator." http://www.yirmeyahureview.com/articles/2008/iaea_report_on_iran.htm#_ftn9

In case you think the idea that Bush wants to bomb Iran is reactionary, you should know that John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN, recently told FoxNews that he can "definitely envision Bush bombing Iran before he leaves office." By bombing Iran, Bush makes it more likely McCain will be elected. But can the US Treasury, can the US economy stand more war? Even if we could afford it, we don't have the manpower in uniform. You know what that means: draft and conscription. Vote for McCain. Watch your children come home in body bags. Watch America go into a Great Depression.
Posted By: Galasso @ 07/02/2008 6:38:54 PM

Comment: This is an extraordinary step. In the 1960's we were paid by the number of credit hours we were taking each semester. In 1969 the monthly rate was - 12 credit hours - $115; 15 credit hours - $155. Those were the flat rates. That left the veteran on the hook for books, rent, etc. Everyone had to get a part-time job - I had three. But the GI Bill was a significant part of encouraging veterans to finish their educations after the war. It's about time the people who risk the most receive the type of compensation that they deserve.