A pal and terrific investigative journalist Lee Fang has new story out in the Nation today about Republican double speak on President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, he reports on over twenty GOP lawmakers requesting health reform money for their constituents, arguing that the money will save lives, improve health, and promote wellness — the very opposite of the arguments these lawmakers make when calling for repeal.
The story mentions NRSC chair Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) breaking ground at an opening ceremony for an Obamacare-funded health clinic, and Congressman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) cutting the ribbon at a health reform-funded health center in his district:
Lee:
Even before President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Republicans were vowing to repeal it. It’s no wonder, because polls showed that the basic elements of the ACA were quite popular, and there was a real danger that it would become more so as people found out that the plan denounced as a “monstrosity” by the National Republican Senatorial Committee would not trample on their liberties so much as help protect their health. Desperate to avoid this, the GOP-controlled House has voted no fewer than thirty-seven times to repeal Obamacare in the three years since it was enacted.
Now letters produced by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that many of these same anti-Obamacare Republicans have solicited grants from the very program they claim to despise. This is evidence not merely of shameless hypocrisy but of the fact that the ACA bestows tangible benefits that even Congress’s most extreme right-wing ideologues are hard-pressed to deny to their constituents.
Please welcome back guest blogger K.C. Boyd. You might remember her from her earlier posts:
A Week of Upchucks
By K. C. Boyd
“Pro-Life” Upchucking
Add Ohio’s to the ever-growing list of states whose House voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
Senator Brownback signed House Bill 2253 this week. Scribbled at the top of his marked up copy of this “Pro-Life Protections Act,” were the words Jesus & Mary, with “Pro-Life” further down in the margins. Good to confirm in writing that legislators really do govern by Sharia the Bible. After North Dakota, the Kansas bill is second to define life as beginning at conception.
Beyond Upchuck: Second child of faith-healing couple dies after no medical care
With the death of an 8-month old baby resulting from Fundamentalist Christians putting faith over science, this is well beyond your average upchuck. When you become a parent, you are responsible for your children’s health and welfare, and that includes after the child is born. If a mother or father chooses God over medicine for themselves, that’s their choice, and their problem. But to sit by and pray while their 8-month baby struggles for days with severe diarrhea and breathing problems, such negligence is criminal (even more so, this being their second child to have died from prayerful neglect.)
Meanwhile, out in Oklahoma, self-proclaimed pro-lifers, more accurately described as pro-negligence once the baby is born, have decided that public education’ isn’t all that important or necessary. In line with the ‘drown-it-in-the-bathtub’ meme, Kansas’ governor and legislators have enacted public school cuts that are among nation’s highest and which, over time, may well destroy public education, as we know it. At the same time, the goodly legislators are looking for ways to cut taxes (for the rich.)
Schaudenfreude Upchuck
Things aren’t looking too promising for a successful GOP’ wooing of the LGBT community. Despite the spoken desire by one wing of the party to at least appear more gay-friendly, the RNC couldn’t help caving to the Rebiblicans’ that make up its base. At the RNC April meeting in Los Angeles, The GOP confirmed that they cannot and will not change their platform when it comes to gay marriage. Why schaudenfreude, you ask? Quite frankly because this upchucker loves nothing more than to see than the GOP engage in all manner of self-sabotage.
Dino Upchuck
Ken Ham is smiling these days thanks to a deal his Answers in Genesis’ ad agency made to screen an animated Creation Museum commercial during previews at each of the 458 theaters showing the newly released Jurassic Park 3-D movie. Not only that but these theaters will also continuously loop said commercial in their lobbies, exposing evermore young people to the Big Lie.
And finally, heading over to the land of whack job Upchucks
Ann Coulter exercised her right to persecute Muslims on Fox (cough) News when she stated that the Boston bombing suspect’s wife should be in prison for wearing a hijab. Talk about denying a woman’s rights – - someone needs to sew her mouth permanently shut.
Pat Robertson, never one to disappoint averred that “Islam is to blame for not only the Boston Marathon bombing, but terrorism around the world.” Comparing ‘Evil’ Islam To Nazism, Robertson is sure to have ruffled the feathers of many a future would-be terrorist.
Lastly there’s the Beckster’s continued accusations of a dreamt–up government cover-up with regards to the Marathon bombing. Informed by what can only be a super-duper top-secret source, Beck accuses the Dems of hiding “damning evidence” that a Saudi National was involved in the Boston bombing. Of course we know he’s a nutcase but something that most folks aren’t aware of is that Homeland Security Chairman Michael T. McCaul, Jeff Duncan, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Peter King and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, Candice Miller wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano requesting an immediate classified debriefing on the Saudi whose identity is said to be hidden and who the government instantly spirited out of the country/ This can’t help but make one remember when Bush and Co. really did whisk the Bin Laden family out of the country just after 9/11, well before private or commercial planes were permitted back in the air.
I say, keep it up guys. Keep on recruiting for the bad guys while you root to undermine education, science and equal rights.
We’ll see you in 2014.
Novelist K.C. Boyd is the author of Being Christian: A Novel. According to Mikey Weinstein, President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, “Boyd created a story so riveting that not only could I not put it down, but upon finishing it, I found myself, like an addict, craving more.
You know how Republicans love to tout the U.S. Constitution? Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to write, you know how Republicans love to tout certain parts of the U.S. Constitution when it suits them. My bad.
One of those parts that they wave around a lot is the First Amendment (and of course, the Second Amendment, but right now, let’s concentrate on the First). “Freedom of speech!” they tweet me if I dare to use the Twitter “block” option, not realizing that the Constitution refers to government infringement, not my personal blocking rights. Same goes for Comments here at TPC. But I digress…
Many in the GOP seem to ignore basic concepts like, oh I dunno, separation of church and state. Wiki reminds us:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.[15]
Kansas governor Sam Brownback must have let that slip his mind. Or didn’t care. Or something. Think Progress is reporting on how he signed one of the most restrictive anti-abortion, pro-personhood, pro-forced birth laws ever, even requiring doctors to lie to their patients about the disputed theory that abortions lead to cancer.
And then he added his own special LookaMeI’mAChristian touch:
Before Brownback signed HB 2253 into law at a ceremony at the statehouse on Friday, an AP photo reveals that he made a few additions of his own in his notes on the bill. He typed out some phrases — “building a culture of life,” and “all human life is sacred” — that he ended up using in his speech to abortion opponents before approving the legislation, and he also scribbled “JESUS + Mary” at the top of the paper.
Guess what, Governor Sam? Your religion is not necessarily anyone else’s religion. Your Jesus/Mary embellishment is completely inappropriate and should never have been scrawled on a government document. And Jesus and Mary have nothing to do with legislating, let alone a law that eliminates legal reproductive rights of women.
Religious beliefs should not be a foundation for U.S. law. Feel free to practice any faith you choose, but don’t force it unto others. To quote Barry Lynn, ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, a lawyer, and Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State:
This struggle is really nothing more than an attempt by somereligious groups to use the power of the government to impose their dogma about reproduction, sexuality and the beginnings of life.
Invoking those names, or any religious references, are irrelevant and, hey guess what, there are actual living, breathing Christians who are pro-choice:
People of faith support women’s access to contraception, and most religious groups don’t want to overturnRoe v. Wade. In fact, over 75 percent of white Protestants — along with 65 percent of black Protestants and 63 percent of white Catholics — support women’s constitutional right to legal abortion services.
As “illegal, violent, threatening behavior” continues from anti-choice, right wing zealots, a few very brave (read: heroic) physicians and their staff have dug in their compassionate heels and are following in Dr. George Tiller’s equally heroic footsteps. If you’re not familiar with him or his work, here is a brief recap:
Because he was one of the few doctors in the nation to perform late-term abortions, Tiller had long been a target. He was shot in both arms in 1993, and his clinic was bombed in 1985. Called “Tiller the Baby Killer” on national TV, he wore a bulletproof vest and rode in an armored car. He was gunned down as he served as an usher at his church one Sunday morning.
Scott Roeder was sentenced to life for assassinating Dr. Tiller, whose clinic, renamed South Wind Women’s Center, will now reopen under heavy security after shutting down for four years. Julie Burkhart bought the building last summer through her foundation, Trust Women; she was Tiller’s spokesperson and political liaison for seven years.
The passage of new restrictive laws makes the reopening of the Wichita clinic all the more remarkable, said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, a New York nonprofit research organization that supports abortion rights.
Burkhart struggled with the idea of returning to Kansas, but finally made the move saying, “Why should I or any other woman have to go without medical service and be deprived of our rights just because of where we live?”
Exactly.
She was able to get a couple of doctors to agree to work at the clinic, but they have to jump through insane hoops just to get to work without their lives being endangered:
Every other week a driver will pick her up at an undisclosed airport, and she has been told to lie down in the back seat so no one will see her. “It would be much easier not to do this. That’s what almost everybody says, so that’s why I will,” [one doctor] said.
No late term-abortions will be done at the clinic, only up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. Other gynecological health services will also be offered.
Burkhart knows her life could be in danger. She worries most for her 12-year-old daughter’s safety in their home. Protesters have been there twice. Last month one held up a sign: “Where’s your church?”
Burkhart sees it as a reminder that Tiller had been killed in his church. Neighbors have been given wanted-style leaflets that say: “Let’s bring Julie to the Lord.“
She takes her strength from Tiller’s memory. “He used to say he felt he owed it to women. He would say, ‘Everyone needs a little help sometimes.’” She figures it’s her turn.
Burkhart is another real hero, as opposed to the nutcases who aggressively threaten and harass physicians who are legally doing their jobs by providing women with the care they need…
At a a hearing about a Kansas statute that allows children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at public universities, Native American Rep. Ponka-We Victors (D-Wichita) went after anti-immigrant, Secretary of State Kris Kobach. That would be the same Kobach who wrote state laws like SB 1070 in Arizona and another in Alabama.
“I think it’s funny Mr. Kobach, because when you mention illegal immigrant, I think of all of you.”
Bingo.
How’s that shoe feel on the other foot, Mr. Kobach?
Wednesday’s hearing on House Bill 2192 would have repealed a nearly 10-year-old statute that allows students who graduate from Kansas high schools and have lived in Kansas for at least three years to pay in-state tuition at state universities and community colleges, regardless of residency status.
Kobach, a lightning-rod for controversy on immigration issues, told the committee federal law conflicts with that statute.
He quote: “U.S. citizens should always come first when it comes to handing out government subsidies.”
Guess whose quote got applause. Hint: It wasn’t Kobach’s.
As Think Progress notes, Kobach “served as an advisor on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012 and continues to fight for stricter laws in Kansas and around the country.”
Here are the next two from Rachel Maddow who clearly and urgently delineates the War on Women in states that are doing away with women’s ability to access reproductive health services.
Sure, Roe v. Wade is still around, and women have a constitutional right to an abortion, but that doesn’t mean conservatives in several states aren’t making that nearly impossible, and defunct, by requiring clinics to do things clinics just cannot do.
Please watch all the segments we’ve made available in both posts. This is about as disturbing as it gets for women’s rights as “illegal, violent, threatening behavior” and obstacles to medical programs continue under the protection of state laws. Harassing and intimidating easy female targets, hostility and scare tactics aimed at physicians and other personnel, are all working, although they are being bravely resisted and outmaneuvered when possible.
Clinics are closing, health services are disappearing, and women are being deprived of care as well as their rights.
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Lt. Col Barry Wingard is the lawyer for Gitmo detainee Fayiz Al-Kandari. For their ongoing story + related topics, please click on the link below: Kuwaiti Citizen Detained at Guantanamo since 2002
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