Rarely do I write specific rebuttals, however, the text box in Facebook is rather too small for such a long list. Here is the picture in question. It is one of those annoying "written with a marker in different colors to seem more important than it really is" kind of posters. After reading the sign in this picture, my rebuttal is listed by a number which corresponds to the poster.
1. The Affordable Care Act
Lifting restrictions on pre-existing conditions and life time caps: good.
Raising the age for children being allowed to stay on their parents insurance: bad. At the age of 25, they are no longer children. Times are tough, but with a little better discipline or guidance on major life decisions from their parents, they could probably avoid needing this kind of help.
Affordable health care for small businesses - any business with over 5 employees is eligible to dump their private insurance (Blue Cross, for example) and force their employees on the government version of Blue Cross. Lower rate of care and benefits, but still technically "insurance" so it technically ensures they are covered for statistics reasons.
Insurance Executives are not the ones who would fight this bill. In fact they would welcome it. By mandating that everyone have insurance, Obama basically gave big business and the insurance industry a huge dose of money for now and forever. Think about it: if everone is required to get insurance, Obama is mandating that all 330 million people in this country go to a certain industry of business and put money into it. Make no mistake: this Affordable Care Act is a tax. With the option of businesses to dump their entire health insurance roster onto the government's roll, this tax will only go up. The exec's at Blue Cross and other health insurance companies don't really care if they take your company's money or our tax money, they are getting paid either way.
2. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan already had agreements to end by a certain date. He is simply fulfilling them by adding an extra two years in Iraq and Afghanistan than what Bush Jr had an agreement for.
3. So do I. I also think men should have this kind of access too. This is only an issue to the religious community who feels they have a religious right to tell you what to do but then hide behind religious freedom when someone trys to tell them what to do.
4. Since 1967, every President has signed an act that mandated fair pay based on race, color, creed or gender. Obama is no different. This kind of act or bill is usually signed somewhere in the late third year or early 4th year of the first term of a President. Oddly enough, between 1967 and 1986, every bill of this nature gradually grew into reverse discrimination type mandates i.e. hire more minorities and women than white men. Since 1986, the balance of these kinds of bills has gradually gotten better i.e. if you're going to build a road, make at least one contractor a minority. But still, race/color/creed/gender are emphasized above ability. That is wrong and disingenuous to the minority contractor who may or may not be the best for the job but instead was chosen because of his color.
5. This is true, as it has been for every president since Jimmy Carter. Between 2003 and 2010, green energy job growth has been the highest ever at 8.3% growth.
6. I agree that education should be more available to all of us and that for-profit education should be more heavily regulated in order to eliminate high interest rates on huge loan sums. Keep in mind that the more education a populace is, the higher percentage of menial jobs will not be filled except by illegal immigrants who will work for anything. For now, be smart and stay away from for-profit colleges. Also remember the children's programs we've had. We've gone from A Bridge To The Future to No Child Left Behind. Somewhere in between those programs, reality set in.
7. Millionaires and billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes and the tax code should eliminate loop holes for these people to hide their money off shore. However, just by paying the same tax rate as us, these people are already paying way more money than us in taxes. Put a flat tax of 15% on you and Warren Buffet or Bill Gates and I'll gaurantee you they are paying more than you in taxes ... by a huge margin. This is a worthy sentiment, however, like any idea embraced by a broad sector of people, there are wildly different interpretations of what this means. Come up with something solid (like a percentage or tax rate) and we'll talk.
8. Obama has inhereited one of the worst economic disasters since the Great Depression, however, he has not added 2.6 million jobs. In fact, he has only added a net gain of .1 million jobs. When you take private sector job gains and subtract public sector job gains (business created jobs minus government payroll created jobs) you get 100,000. To be fair, he has not completed a full term yet, but his numbers stacked up against every president since Truman are very dismal. Another factor to keep in mind is private vs public sector job growth. Early in his term, Obama added heavily to the public sector job rolls to offset the private sector not hiring. At an average of $39.25 per hour (required because of civil service union agreements) to staple papers or paper clip notes, that's a huge drain on the federal coffers. One last note, the economy is not slowly improving. It's slowly getting worse and better in spurts. Political devisiveness created by the paradoxial right vs left machinations have created an atmosphere of oppression and stifled free thinking in Washington D.C. If you don't belong to either the right or left way of thinking, your ideas are automatically struck down. Because neither side can get our tax and spend debt spending under control, in a few years, we will be a third world country because our money will be worthless.
