Crabby Appleton Politics 1
When you turn from the rhetoric of Republicans to their actions, it is difficult not to wonder whether one of their core values is kicking people when they are down.
The 30-year-old mother of two boys was stunned.
“It is written in stone that he’s covered,” Muhammad said of Samad, who qualifies for Medicaid based on his serious medical condition, not the family’s income level. “He’s pacemaker-dependent . . . [H]is heart will not beat without a pacemaker.”
But the heartbeat of the fragile little Samad was clearly not a priority for welfare officials, who informed Muhammad that she had failed to renew his benefits – even though she said she had not received renewal paperwork in the mail – and that she’d have to reapply.
April 5, 2012 at 10:35 am
Well it is. They stink of the desire to mete out punishment to others. I’ve noticed most extremists get jazzed by exhibitions of cruelty and then coming up with twisted rationalizations on why people who have been struck down either deserved it or worked hard for it. The easiest people to punish in American society are those in bad economic circumstances. Republicans would argue that it was this woman’s fault on many levels. She was lazy and did not renew her paperwork, she should have had a better job so that her offspring could have a pacemaker without taking government money, which they all think is theirs, and by taking it to save someone else’s life you somehow diminish their’s very greatly, she didn’t have the right name or religion, I could go on for five hundred words.
All society’s have people like this. They’re those who shoot the pets of neighbors who wander into their flower beds, who call the cops as soon as some kid in the area fires up his rock band in the garage, who — if they get on a town council, become responsible for all kinds of nuisance ordnances that criminalize things like weeds being allowed to grow to high or a bee hive within 10 yards of your family residence, of ridiculously punitive fines for minor traffic violations. Every society has to deal with them. In the past, ours did. However, because of dysfunction and decadence, they’ve become mainstream and grabbed total control of half the political system.