Death Warrants and Reefer Madness
In order to save a buck, we are asked to believe, Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona, is slicing more sick people from the transplant lists.
"She's signing death warrants -- that's what she's doing. This is death for me," says Gravagna, 44, a heavy-set man who takes 14 medications to stay alive.
Gravagna is among 98 people denied state Medicaid funding for potentially life-saving transplants and at the forefront of a harrowing battle over the state's public finances.
The man has a serious heart condition, has a pacemaker keeping him alive and WAS on a list for a transplant.
Not no more. Jan Brewer has cut him loose.
Republicans like to pretend they are engaging in 'leadership', making "tough decisons' about this or that when in reality, what is going on is they are using their power to demolish targets of Conservative Ideologies.
That's all they are doing.
They don't care that it costs jobs and lives.
They don't care and they consider not caring to be good style and form.
We have seen them kill the rail projects that would have been hugely beneficial to the People - jobs and more efficient transportation.
Noooooo. The Republicans don't want you to have that.
In Wisconsin, we see the Governor whining about the budget and trying to connect the need to destroy collective bargaining. Conservatives HATE little people having this sort of power so the fight is on.
Brewer is targeting Medicaid, another government program Conservatives, in all their overflowing compassion, despise. So she is "balancing the budget' by eliminating some people from the roles. It is better to let people die than use Medicaid money to keep them alive.
But wait... what's this?
This week the legislature decided to hand over $5 million to Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu in order for him to form an anti-smuggling unit. The sheriff couldn't convince his own board of supervisors to go along with this plan, but he is a powerhouse in Republican politics these days, a possible contender for the seat soon to be vacated by Rep. Jeff Flake.
He gets what he wants.
Babeu would argue that his unit will save lives, which is more tragic than ironic since the $5 million he's getting represents about $3.5 million more than it would take to reinstate the transplant program and save the lives of roughly 100 Arizona citizens.
That's from Feb. 25 2011. Fresh.
Money for reefer madness but not to save the lives of common people? That's republican values!
Republicans care more about supressing 'drugs' - in this case 70% or more of the "drugs" being smuggled is just marijuana, something that never kills anybody - but reefer madness is a major value of republicans so the sick and the poor get kicked to the curb and repblican law enforcement getys what it want.
I just LOVE how they say they are 'saving lives': these stupid bastards want you to believe (and a lot of dumb Americans will buy it hook, line, and sinker) that stopping the smuggling of marijuana from Mexico is somehow going to translate into 'saved lives".
The stupidity of this arrangment is nearly toxic. Never mind that proper regulation of marijuana in America would KILL marijuana smuggling almost overnight. Just don't think about that. Not only save lives but TONS of money they are trying to save by letting innocent people die. Don't legalize pot, let people die so we can save lives. That is THE MESSAGE.
These compassionate republicans, so eager to 'save lives' will allow innocent Americans to die miserable, preventable deaths, while they go cowboy up and chase marijuana smugglers in the desert, for more than TWICE what it would take to save about 100 Americans on the transplant roles. This is republican values on display.
It's better to let transplant patients get the news they have been sacrificed for the Culture Of Life so that "lives can be saved".
So yeah, people have complained about all this.
The Legislature has been doing it best Monty Python impression in years. They have us in stitches over “birther” bills, firearm proposals, 14th Amendment challenges, even a kooky scheme that would have Arizona unofficially secede from the union by establishing a panel that could decide on its own to nullify any federal law the legislature doesn't happen to like.
But while we're yucking it up over goofy ideas like this the people denied the transplants are getting more and more ill and the governor and her legislative death panel do nothing.
Among other things, the politicians say the transplants don't work, even though doctors representing major transplant organizations have told them they're wrong.
“The argument that the transplants don't work is just so incomplete and so invalid,” Rep. Tovar told me. “If we are going to hold each other accountable then we have to use the best information that is out there and the best info right now says that these transplants save lives.”
The Republicans thumb their nose at the facts, at reality, and at science.
Republicans appear to take the complaints of the People as proof their fucked-up policies are popular and working. Again, it seems to be considered good form.
Call it what it is folks: MALICE.