Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli has a smirk worthy of George Bush.^They're calling Ken Cuccinelli a nut case today for his proposal that Virginia drop out of Medicaid and I tend to agree with that assessment. But not just because this fringie has gone public with what people like him want: the destruction of all aid to those who need it, paid for it, earned it and for many American citizens on the short end of the culture who simply can't take care of themselves.
Here's your Attorney General:
- He's suing to reverse our national health care bill, the one that is so minimal as to be embarrassing, but a start.
- He said--overruling the General Assembly--that the Board of Health can require abortion clinics to meet hospital-level standards.
- He issued a ruling allowing cops to ask anybody they stop for immigration papers.
- He ruled that gay people are not protected in Virginia from discrimination.
- He demanded a judicial review of the EPA's greenhouse gas rulings--one that has overwhelming scientific backing and has been thoroughly reviewed.
- He wants to challenge federal fuel efficiency standards.
- He sought to sue a former UVa professor for--essentially--tax fraud for his findings on climate change, one that was substantiated completely by the National Academy of Sciences.
- He put a breastplate on Virginia's state seal to cover a ... well ... breast.
- He authorized law enforcement to search students' phones.
- As a legislator, he sponsored legislation to repeal laws against carrying guns in bars.
- He is opposed to any but abstinence only sex education.
- He is a closet "birther."
Social Security, Medicare and Medicade help separate us from the Third World with our effort to take care of people who are old, very young, sick or simply on fixed incomes. None of the programs is perfect. Social Security, for example, should not be paid to the rich who don't need it, even though they paid for it. Consider it a tax on wealth if you want, but if you're worth millions, a couple of thou a month is going to constitute lunch money. For somebody on the other end of the scale, it could be the determinate of whether there is food in the house or even a house to have the food in.
Medicare, probably covers too many people, as well, but Medicad--especially in Virginia, which ranks near the bottom in the U.S. in disbursements--doesn't. It covers too few with too little. And Cuccinelli wants to reduce that to nothing.
According to one estimate, about 80,000 Virginians would be expelled immediately from care facilities if Medicaid goes. The poor and the sick would go to the streets--where Cuccinelli's ilk believes they should be.
His is a heartless, inhuman and inhumane philosophy that believes money is more important than human lives and this guy calls himself "pro life." So many of the "pro-lifers" hold on to the idea that the lives worth saving belong to the unborn and the rich. Everybody else is on his own. Forget the sick children, the elderly with dementia, those who can't and never could afford anything because they never had a chance in the first place. They were born poor in a state that elected Ken Cuccinelli to office, partly because he is "pro life." Talk about your political Big Lie. Pro life, pro tobacco, pro guns, pro death penalty and against the very things that can help make life livable for so many Virginians.
Send this man back to the rock he crawled out from and do it before he causes any more damage.
(Washington Post photo.)
...and then step on it.
ReplyDeleteRE:"Social Security, for example, should not be paid to the rich who don't need it, even though they paid for it."
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents, well-to-do old-time Republicans, thought this way. They were always bewildered by the fact that they got social security when they didn't need it. And they made a point of paying social security for their housekeeper, when few people did that, and no one checked. They considered it part of her wages.
--Mary Bullington
As it is structured, Social Security is essentially a mandated savings account that is carried forward from generation to generation, with benefits varying based on contribution. If it becomes means tested, the people who are now yelling that it should be means tested will start yelling that it is welfare for people who don't deserve it. Believe me, everyone would choose to be well off if they could. But Social Security is not the question here, because it has no impact on the budget or the deficit at all. Mr. Cuccinelli apparently thinks that the need of the wealthy to avoid paying taxes is more important than the need of the other 98% of us to have food on the table, a place to live, and some measure of peace of mind about being able to take care of the simple needs of our families for health care, living expenses, and education.
ReplyDeleteMary/Sarah:
ReplyDeleteA couple of points:
Receiving Social Security payments is not mandatory. If you don't want it, you just don't sign up.
Republicans are opposed to SS and always have been. They have worked in a stealthy fashion for years to undermine it and continue to do that. The latest "stiumlus" package (the budget compromise) can ultimately hurt Social Security and could result in it needing to be restructured or subsidized. At that point it would become part of the budget. We have to make some clear national decisions on our priorities for SS, Medicare and Medicaid. They are wildly expensive, but necessary in a country that cares about its people.
I am shocked and disappointed to discover that FRONT is an anti-Republican publication.
ReplyDeleteGood article, Dan, tho I don't go too left or too right these days. If you're gonna criticize dumb shit that people do, no need to use kid gloves. You don't.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but thinking, this ain't even party politics anymore. There's some kind of extreme desperation coming out of the right more than ever. And the left is lamer than ever. It's almost like the Romans not getting enough blood sport at the Colleseum. Hungry beasts versus unarmed captives. And I'm afraid things will end similarly as it did for Rome.
Basically, they want their slaves and eat it too.
Sad that Cuccinelli's and seemingly all GOP's constituents feel that way. Didn't they call themselves the Moral something-or-other? Wait til next year when they repeal the minimum wage because it obstructs the free market.
Anonymous (and I HATE it when people use this blog without having the courage to identify themselves), FRONT is not anti-anything, Republican included. This is my blog, not the FRONT's blog. This is not reflective of the magazine. My business partner Tom Field is on the right and I am on the left politically, but I don't think either of us is anti-anything except maybe stupidity, which we define differently.
ReplyDeleteI'll say this again: FRONT is politically neutral. It is a business magazine, not a political voice.