Well, I see that Governor Pence just couldn’t help himself–despite the fact that he didn’t have to step into the controversy over the shutdown, despite the fact that anything he said about it was guaranteed to piss off one side or the other, he simply had to express his approval of an irresponsible and a-constitutional action that is damaging the American economy and hurting millions of innocent people.
Way to go, Mike.
For first class stupidity, though, you really have to turn to Representative Todd Rokita. And leave it to the Daily Show to expose how utterly clueless and embarrassing Tea Party Todd can be.
One of the columns in yesterday’s New York Times referenced the old tale–variously attributed to Native Americans, village leaders of old or saintly religious folks– about the young woman who comes to a wise elder to ask what she should do about a recurring nightmare in which two wolves are ferociously fighting. She asks what it means, and is told that the wolves represent two sides of her own nature: the good and bad.
When she then asks which will win, the wise man tells her “The one you feed.”
This, in a nutshell, is why wise people refuse to negotiate with terrorists. Negotiation and compromise are important in many areas of life: between spouses, in legislative chambers, even at times between parents and children. But like all tools, it is important to know when–and when not–to deploy them.
The Tea Party radicals currently holding the nation hostage to their demands are terrorists. Unable to marshal the votes to defeat the Affordable Care Act , unable to defeat a President who ran on a record that prominently featured that Act, they have resorted to the sort of blackmail characteristic of terrorists: give us what we want or I’ll kill or maim the hostage.
The American economy is the hostage.
Even people who are adamantly opposed to the ACA should condemn these tactics, for the same reason that kids on a playground should refuse to give in to the bully who says “Play by my rules or I’ll take my ball and bat and go home.” It’s the same reason we don’t negotiate with rogue states that capture and hold innocent civilians hostage. Giving in to their demands encourages the behavior we deplore. It sets a dangerous precedent for the future–a future in which spoiled brat minorities who don’t get their way through legitimate means can circumvent democratic processes and actually be rewarded for the damage they cause.
Ironically, if these tactics work for Tea Party fanatics today, you can be sure they’ll be deployed by folks with very different agendas tomorrow. As a friend of mine likes to say, poison gas is a great weapon– until the wind shifts.
Apparently, common sense is fairly uncommon, and compassion is just a word in the dictionary.
The Dallas News recently reported that Texas’ refusal to expand Medicaid and participate in the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) will cause individual health insurance premiums to rise a whopping 9.3%.
The Texas Observer reports that Texas will not only leave 100 billion dollars “on the table,” but the decision will cause a raise in local property taxes. (The burden of emergency medical care generally falls on property taxpayers in Texas–just as it does in Indiana. When people take Mike Pence’s advice and get their “access to care” through the Emergency Room, property taxpayers pay for that unnecessarily-expensive care. )
Fiscal stupidity is one thing. Essentially telling poor people to f**k off is another.
Nearly 7 million adults ages 19 to 64 would qualify for Medicaid in the 25 states that have not voted to expand it, according to an Urban Institute report. Those 7 million people won’t get Medicaid and they won’t get federal help to buy health insurance.
The refusal to expand Medicaid won’t “defund” the Affordable Care Act, or change any of its provisions. The only “message” it will send to Washington is “we’ll show you–we’ll hurt ourselves!”
The bottom line: Rick Perry, Mike Pence and other Republican governors care more about obstructing Obama than about the health of their economies or their citizens.
That’s politics these days. And it’s not only stupid, it’s despicable.
Since so much of the public has no idea what the debt ceiling is, what default is, what bond markets are, or what the full faith and credit of the United States means, polling on the subject just doesn’t tell us much.
The post went on to describe a different sort of poll that proved the point; it asked about the debt ceiling, but phrased the same question two different ways. When asked simply whether Congress should raise the debt ceiling, respondents were pretty evenly split. The second version asked whether Congress should prevent the government from borrowing money in order to pay its debts; 73% of those responding to the question when it was posed that way said such a step would seriously harm the economy, and opposed it. Only 22% approved.
The American people aren’t stupid. When the question is asked using language citizens understand, they resoundingly offer the right answer. The lesson of this–and multiple other examples–is twofold: (1) the public is generally unfamiliar with the language of its own government, with many equating “raising the debt ceiling” with incurring new debt; and (2) polls that politicians reference to “prove” that the American public is on their side of an issue tend to be worthless and/or deceptive.
Thanks to their own extremism and lack of elementary economic knowledge, the Tea Party zealots who have captured one of America’s major parties and the House of Representatives are poised to do substantial damage to the people they have been elected to represent.
Pundits from both Left and Right (even Karl Rove!) predict that the government crisis they are determined to precipitate will create a backlash that can only hurt the GOP, but those warnings are falling on deaf ears. As a friend of mine used to say, you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
The broad, sane middle of the American public will need to batten down the hatches and prepare for a totally unnecessary period of fiscal and economic misery–brought to us by people motivated by one and only one “principle”–ensuring that thirty million Americans currently without health insurance don’t get access to healthcare.
And to make sure they don’t, they’re willing to plunge the country into another recession.
Excuse me while I go hit myself some more with that hammer….
The most mind-blowing statistic is one I didn’t previously know: The American government already spends more on healthcare per capita than the U.K., Australia and other countries with “free” systems. Think about that.
